Food, fuel shortages and joblessness cloud Malawi’s elections
A campaign billboard in Blantyre of Malawi’s President Lazarus Chakwera, who is running for a second term in the upcoming presidential election on September 12, 2025.
Malawians will go to the polls on Tuesday with President Lazarus Chakwera under pressure, accused of failing to deliver on promises that brought him to power five years ago. Chief among them was a rapid economic turnaround that critics say never came.
Fuel shortages, inflation, and joblessness dominate the run-up to the September 16 presidential, parliamentary, and local government elections. Opinion polls show former President Peter Mutharika, whom Chakwera defeated in the 2020 court-ordered rerun, capitalising on the incumbent’s faltering first term.
