THE DAILY FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL
GRACE PHIRI
Senior News Analyst
On a rainy afternoon in Blantyre, Dorothy Tchale walks slowly along the roadside with a basin full of sugarcane balanced on her head, searching the street for customers.
The rain has driven most people away from the roadside, forcing them to rush into nearby shops and verandas for shelter. With fewer people passing by, business has slowed. Still, she keeps walking, hoping someone might stop and buy.
Tchale occasionally lifts a piece of sugarcane and calls out to the few pedestrians rushing past, hoping someone might stop and buy.
“I just want to finish selling and go home,” she says. “But when it rains like this, customers disappear.”
For the 35-year-old mother of three, this small roadside business is not a choice she made willingly. It is the only option she had left after losing her job.
Until recently, Tchale worked as a security guard. But when the security company she worked for lost its contract with the institution where she was stationed, she was laid off.
Without any savings or alternative employment, she turned to selling sugarcane to support her family.
With a starting capital of about K8 000, she buys sugarcane and sells it in small portions along the roadside. If business goes well, she can make a profit of about K4 000.
Sometimes she sells everything in a single day. Other times, especially when the weather is bad or customers are few, it can take two days or more.
The money she earns is barely enough to sustain her household.
Two of her children have already dropped out of school because the family can no longer afford basic school-related costs. Only one child remains in school, benefiting from Malawi’s free primary education programme.
Her husband survives on irregular piecework, but together their combined income struggles to meet even the most basic household needs.
“Most of the money goes to rent and food,” she says. “Sometimes we even struggle to have one proper meal in a day.”
Tchale’s story mirrors the lived reality of many Malawian households grappling with the rising cost of living.
Rising cost of living
Recent data released by the Centre for Social Concern (CfSC) show that the cost of living has surged by more than 46 percent, pushing the monthly cost required for an average urban household of six to over K1 million, up from less than K700 000 just a year ago.
Although maize prices dropped slightly from K55 000 to K50 000 per 50 kilogramme bag in January, the relief has been overshadowed by sharp increases in other essential commodities.
In Blantyre, the cost of meeting basic needs now stands at nearly K1.2 million per month while households in Lilongwe require more than K1 million. Zomba and Mzuzu are approaching similar levels.
CfSC economic governance officer Agnes Nyirongo says for most Malawians, these figures represent a growing gap between what they earn and what it actually costs to live.
She says: “The implications of these trends are profound. Even where wages have not changed, their real value has diminished significantly.”
Nyirongo notes that low-income households spend a larger share of their income on food and transport, meaning increases in these areas disproportionately affect the poor.
While maize, the country’s staple food, registered a small price reduction, other essential food items have recorded sharp increases.
The CfSC data show that the price of beans increased by 30 percent, sugar by more than 24 percent and beef by 24 percent during the review period. Eggs also recorded notable price increases.
“These are not luxury food items; they are essential sources of protein and nutrition,” says CfSC, observing that food costs rose by 4.26 percent in just one month, highlighting the fragile state of food security in many urban households. “As a result, many families are turning to cheaper, starch-heavy meals while reducing consumption of protein-rich foods.”
Pressure on household budgets extends beyond food
Between December 2025 and January this year, CfSC data show that non-food costs rose by 5.63 percent, driven largely by increases in transport and energy costs.
Electricity tariffs have also increased by 12 percent while charcoal prices have surged, further increasing household energy costs.
Statutory wages not helping
Despite periodic adjustments to Malawi’s statutory minimum wage, the majority of workers remain vulnerable to rising living costs.
According to the 2026 Labour Market Profile published by the Danish Trade Union Development Agency, Malawi’s labour market remains heavily dominated by informal employment.
The report shows that 93 percent of Malawians were working in the informal economy in 2024, up from 85 percent in 2013.
This figure is more than double the Southern Africa regional average of 39 percent.
Reads the report in part: “Many of these workers operate in small and micro enterprises that are weakly regulated and often excluded from minimum wage protections and collective bargaining systems.
“As a result, large numbers of workers earn incomes far below subsistence levels.”
Scotland-based Malawian economist Velli Nyirongo says the dominance of informal employment not only affects livelihoods, but also presents serious fiscal challenges for the government.
He said: “Informal businesses are often unregistered and transact mainly in cash. As a result, the government struggles to collect income tax, corporate tax and value-added tax from the majority of economic actors.”
This means the tax burden falls heavily on a small number of formal businesses and salaried workers.
On his part, economist Milward Tobias notes that managing tax administration in such an environment becomes both difficult and costly.
“It is important to formalise the economy, not only by creating more salaried jobs, but also by providing incentives for businesses to register with the Malawi Revenue Authority,” he says.
Government losing out
According to data from the Economists Association of Malawi, the informal economy now accounts for about 46.81 percent of the country’s official Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
With Malawi’s GDP estimated at about $14.9 billion (around K26 trillion), the informal economy represents a potential tax contribution of approximately seven percent of GDP, equivalent to about $1.04 billion or roughly K1.8 trillion.
However, much of this potential revenue remains outside the tax system.
No escape for the consumer?
Consumers Association of Malawi executive director John Kapito warns that the recent fuel price increase could push the cost of goods and services even higher.
He says the increases are coming at a time consumers are already struggling with one of the most severe cost-of-living pressures in recent years.
“These increases were overdue as the government has been struggling to bring fuel into the country due to foreign exchange shortages and inefficiencies in decision-making systems,” he says.
Inflation has eased, but pressure remains
Although Malawi’s annual inflation rate slowed slightly to 24.9 percent in January 2026, down from 26 percent in December, economists say the broader inflation environment remains fragile.
Food inflation fell to 22.1 percent from 26.5 percent, but non-food inflation increased to 29.8 percent, up from 25.2 percent.
The Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM) says inflation outlook for 2026 is improving, supported by several factors, a position that has since seen the central bank reduce the policy rate by 200 basis from 26 percent to 24 percent.
RBM Governor George Partridge said in the statement of the Monetary Policy Committee first meeting of 2026 that the current inflation outlook allows for a cautious reduction in the policy rate, while maintaining a sufficiently tight monetary policy stance, to continue steering inflation towards the medium‑term objective of five percent.
He said: “This improvement in headline inflation was mainly driven by lower food prices, following Government interventions to boost maize supply.
“However, prices of non-food items such as fuel and electricity increased, which pushed up non-food inflation. These developments largely reflect higher production and import costs rather than strong demand in the economy.”
