NAIROBI, Kenya — Malawi’s civil society must be given a seat at the table before the government contracts loans, while international lenders should face greater scrutiny over the terms of financing extended to the country, Malawi Economic Justice Network (MEJN) Executive Director Bertha Phiri has said, writes Winston Mwale.
Phiri made the call in an exclusive interview with AfricaBrief shortly after the sixth African Conference on Debt and Development (AfCoDD VI) in Nairobi, Kenya.
She said civil society should be involved in debt negotiations before loan agreements are finalised or presented to Parliament for authorisation, arguing that earlier public participation would strengthen transparency and accountability in Malawi’s debt management.
Phiri said civil society engagement should extend beyond the government to the international institutions and lenders negotiating financing with Malawi.
She said the call was among the key lessons from AfCoDD VI, which focused on advancing Africa’s Common African Position (CAP) on Debt and strengthening collective action on the continent’s debt crisis.
From declarations to implementation
Phiri said Africa has made progress in developing common positions on debt but has struggled to translate those commitments into concrete action.
“The easiest thing that has happened is that we are all agreeing that African countries have a common challenge: unsustainable debts and lack of transparency,” she said.
She said the priority now should be developing a mechanism with clear indicators to track what governments are doing to promote transparency, accountability and public disclosure.
“We need a common position. It has come about, the African position, but going forward, we need to find ourselves being able to track all the aspirations and the decisions that Africans have brought about under this AfCoDD VI,” Phiri said.
Phiri said Malawi has recorded some positive developments in debt governance since 2021, including the enactment of the 2022 Debt Act.
She said the legislation gives Parliament an oversight role in scrutinizing loan authorization bills and provides a 21-day period for the process.
She also said Malawi has improved the public disclosure of its debt position, allowing citizens to better understand the country’s borrowing levels.
“Malawians are able to know and actually to appreciate our debt levels,” Phiri said. “That’s a positive development.”
However, she said greater transparency after loans have been contracted is not enough and that civil society needs opportunities to influence borrowing decisions before they are finalized.
MEJN takes debt justice to communities
Phiri said MEJN is strengthening debt justice advocacy in Malawi through economic literacy programmes targeting young people, civil society organizations and communities.
“We are building the capacities. We are the common interlocutor. We are standing in to coordinate all the players in Malawi,” she said.
She said MEJN has conducted engagements at universities, organized town hall meetings and reached rural communities to improve public understanding of debt and economic governance.
The organization has also reframed its debt justice campaign around economic literacy, which Phiri said helps citizens understand the economy before engaging in broader discussions on economic justice.
“We have actually decentralized the debt justice campaign discussions into economic literacy because people should understand our economy and then the economic justice aspects,” she said.
MEJN is also involved in coordinating national debt and tax platforms, working with debt coalitions and engaging parliamentary committees to build wider support for debt accountability.
Phiri said these efforts are intended to strengthen the ability of Malawians to understand, scrutinize and participate in decisions affecting the country’s public finances.
The AfCoDD VI discussions come amid growing calls from African civil society organizations for stronger coordination, greater transparency in sovereign borrowing and reforms to the global financial architecture.