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Mutharika off to UK this Friday for Business Summit

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Mutharika off to UK this Friday for Business Summit

His Excellency the President Professor Arthur Peter Mutharika will on Friday 17 January, 2020 leave the country for London, United Kingdom to attend the United Kingdom-Africa Summit.

According to a statement from the Office of the President and Cabinet, Professor Mutharika will depart Kamuzu International Airport in Lilongwe at 4pm.

The Summit will be hosted by the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, and will bring together businesses, governments and international institutions to showcase and promote the breadth and quality of investment opportunities across Africa.

Mutharika

The Summit will strengthen the UK’s partnership with African nations to build a secure and prosperous future for all our citizens.

It will mobilise new and substantial investment to create jobs and boost mutual prosperity. Malawi’s President, HE Professor Peter Mutharika, is expected to attend the summit, accompanied by ministers, business executives and trade officials.

The summit will be a chance to demonstrate to global business the scale of commercial opportunities in Africa. It will also be an opportunity for the UK to showcase our unique offer to investors and to our African partners. That offer comprises not just UK Export Finance and CDC, both of whom are increasing the scale and reach of their efforts in Africa, but also the wealth of expertise and capital available in the UK.

Unicef opens first African Drone and Data Academy in Malawi

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Unicef opens first African Drone and Data Academy in Malawi

Unicef announced on monday, the opening of the first African UAV and Data Academy (ADDA) in Lilongwe, Malawi. The training center, developed in partnership with Virginia State Polytechnic University and the University of Science and Technology of Malawi, aims to equip young Africans with skills in the use of UAVs for humanitarian development and commercial purposes.

The project is scheduled to last four years. About 150 students will be trained in two cohorts, through a 12-week certificate course. “The inaugural class of the ADDA includes 16 students from Malawi and 10 from across Africa. More than half of the students (55 percent) are women with undergraduate degrees in science, technology or engineering. The second ADDA cohort will start its training mid-April 2020,” Unicef said. The call for applications is open until 26 January.

The training will combine theoretical and practical methodologies for the manufacture, testing, and flight of UAVs, with an emphasis on professionalization. This will give graduates the skills needed for jobs using UAV applications in the agriculture, health and natural resource monitoring sectors.

Thanks to funding from the UN agency’s partners, the training courses are free of charge. In addition, students will be offered full scholarships covering transportation, board, and lodging.

Malawi police face legal action over failure to investigate alleged rapes

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Malawi police face legal action over failure to investigate alleged rapes

A group of lawyers in Malawi is taking legal action against the police for failing to investigate allegations of rape against their officers during post-election protests.

Mphatso Iphani, a spokesperson for the Women Lawyers Association of Malawi, said that three months since the alleged attacks, “no concrete action has been taken, despite the sheer amount of evidence that the girls and women were assaulted”.

The association, a not-for-profit organisation made up of lawyers from different disciplines, is preparing to file lawsuits against officers.

“Our hope is to get justice for the women who were assaulted and punish the perpetrators. Finally, something concrete is happening, unlike with the other stakeholders who have been just sitting on this,” she said.

Since May last year, tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets protesting against the alleged mismanagement of the general election that secured the return to office of the incumbent Peter Mutharika.

Demonstrators set up roadblocks in the capital last October, leading to the deployment of police. One police officer was killed and officers stormed the area, spraying teargas and attacking the public.

A human rights organisation documented accounts from women and girls who said they had been sexually assaulted by police officers. This led the Malawi Human Rights Commission, a state-funded institution led by government-appointed commissioners, to institute an investigation that found one girl under 18 had allegedly been sexually assaulted and seven women allegedly raped during the demonstration.

The Women Lawyers Association, the Malawi Human Rights Defenders Coalition and the Women’s Legal Resources Centre are among the bodies that have condemned the alleged acts.

On Thursday, people gathered in the capital, Lilongwe, calling on police to step up efforts to investigate the allegations.

However, the police maintain they will only act once their own investigation has concluded.

“The latest is that we’ve launched a full criminal investigation following the recommendation from the Malawi Human Rights Commission and [our] commission of enquiry to prosecute the perpetrators,” said James Kadazera, a spokesperson for the Malawi police.

Malawi Police

Kadazera said the results of the investigation should be released in the coming week, but rights activists are sceptical.

Maggie Kathewera Banda, executive director of the Women’s Legal Resources Centre, called on the police to take the allegations more seriously.

ACB fails to name election case bribe suspects

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ACB fails to name election case bribe suspects

Malawi’s Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) Director General Reyneck Matemba said Tuesday they will not name nor arrest individuals who allegedly sought to bribe a panel of five judges currently writing the verdict of the high profile presidential elections case.

“We do not arrest before investigating- that’s not how we operate. After receiving complaint, we have to make independent investigation and verify on any allegation.

“And we cannot go about naming people at this point in time. What if after investigating we found out that they were not involved in the first place,?” Matemba asked, speaking at a presser in Lilongwe.

(ACB) Director General Reyneck Matemba

“We will make arrests, and the arrests will be public and the court hearing will be public and you will know the individuals at that point in time,” he said.

He confirmed that the graft busting body is investigating two individuals on allegations that they attempted to bribe the five judges that are hearing the Presidential election case.

 Matemba said that the matter was first brought up by the Chief Justice Andrew Nyirenda on November 28 last year, where he indicated that the judges had complained to him that the two individuals, a high ranking civil servant and another one from the private sector tried to bribe the judges.

He disclosed that then the Chief Justice put the complaint in writing on December 2.

“We did not call the judge at particular time as we understood that they were busy with the case. Even after they had finished, we decided to give them time to rest. We then invited the two concerned judges where we interviewed them on December 28.

“We have been investigating this matter for close to two weeks and we are still investigating and we are making good progress,” said Matemba.

He had also undertaken to breach some of the bureaucracies in the ACB saying the bureau was handling the case with the urgency it deserves.

Political connotation

According to Matemba, the investigations at hand were criminal in nature not political in nature.

“If there is politics associated with this, we have nothing to do with that. We are investigating individuals. We do not prosecute political parties, we prosecute individuals,” said Matemba.

Four more complaints

Matemba also disclosed that the ACB was pursuing four more complaints in related to the presidential case.

He said apart from the complaint from the Chief Justice, the bureau also received a complaint from “a prominent civil society leader, another one is a tip from an anonymous source the last one being from a concerned citizen”.

Kabwila out on bail

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Kabwila out on bail

The Lilongwe Senior Resident Magistrate’s Court has granted bail to politician Jessie Kabwila who was arrested for intimidating Constitutional Court judges.

Senior Resident Magistrate Shyreen Chirwa  told Kabwila to pay a cash bond of K20,000, produce two traceable sureties with a non-cash bond of K200,000 each and report to Central Region Police once every fortnight.

Kabwila outside court

Kabwila was arrested on Saturday night on allegations that she threatened to deal with judges in the presidential elections case should their ruling favour resident Peter Mutharika’s Democratic Progressive Party.

According to the police, Kabwila also proposed violence against Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) Chairperson Jane Ansah, who is accused of mismanaging the May 21 elections.

She is accused of uttering the remarks on Thursday during demonstrations against police officers suspected of raping women and girls.

On Monday, Kabwila appeared at Lilongwe Magistrate’s Court where she was charged with proposing violence at an assembly and uttering words to prejudice of the Constitutional Court.

The UTM member denies the charges. In her own words, the former Malawi Congress Party publicity secretary said, “We were listening to the proceedings and am here to tell you we won’t accept anything other than nullification, so get ready (tonse timamvera mlanduwu, ndiye sitilora zauchibwana zilizonse kupatula kugamula kuti kuchitike rerun, apo bii muzanukha mphira mdziko muno).”

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