Chief Mizinga’s war on child marriage
Mizinga Village, located about 75 kilometres south of Machinga Boma, is a stunning paradox.
To the west lies Lake Chilwa, teeming with fish, a vital source of food and income for the community. The fertile wetland is ideal for crop production, including rice, maize and vegetables.

However , enduring poverty lures women and girls into a risky sex-for-fish web.
“This exploitative exchange occurs at the hands of fishermen, who hold economic power because they have the fish and cash,” says Traditional Authority (T/A) Mizinga.
He was speaking at a community meeting facilitated by the Malawi Human Rights Resource Centre (MHRRC) to tackle gender-based violence (GBV). The community dialogue is expected to air on Tikambe on MBC Television on Sunday.
To kick-start the dialogue, journalist Emmanuel Thuwala, who hosts Tikambe, asked a volunteer to share thier experience.
At first, women appeared reluctant to speak, but Amina Amadu, 35, stepped up.
“No pictures, no videos,” she demanded.
With anonymity granted, Amadu poignantly disclosed how she was trapped in a cobweb of transactional sex to get some fish for her family.
She narrated: “It all started one evening in 2005 when I was 15 years old. My mom sent me to the lake to buy fish.
“That evening, I met a man who would become the father of my four children. At first, he offered me fish for free. Later, he started demanding sex in exchange for it. This is how I fell pregnant for him.”
Amadu’s ‘marriage of convenience’ collapsed after 12 years.
“The man dumped me to look after the children single-handedly. I desperately found a new partner who also abandoned me a few years later,” she says.
Amadu is a mother of six from two absent fathers.
“It’s not something we did willingly, but a desperate attempt to escape poverty. When there is no money and the children are hungry, you can do whatever it takes to bring food home.” she says.
The woman has vowed never to marry again.
She uses her story to sensitise girls to the ills of harmful practices, especially sex for fish, teen pregnancy and child marriage.
Her testimony fired many women to raise their hands, eager to share their tales of struggle and survival.
Taking to the microphone, Loveness Walusa, 18, said she married young to flee poverty.
The girl and her nine siblings were raised by a single parent who could not afford her school fees.
“I quit school for marriage and my mother didn’t reprimand me, hoping it would ease our pressure. But it never did,” she stated.
The Constitution outlaws sexual unions involving children aged below 18, but nearly half of girls marry before the legal age and a third become mothers before their 19th birthday.
In 2021, Machinga district youth officer Hope Mwafulirwa said Mizinga’s area recorded 42 teenage pregnancies in three primary schools: Mawuwa, Nkotamu, and Chilala. The number shot to 89 a year later and 91 in 2023.
Teen pregnancies in Machinga have risen from 1 978 in 2023 to 2 136 in 2024 while child marriages rose from 219 to 368 during the same period.
T/A Mizinga expressed his disappointment with the figures.
“These statistics make me sick. Teen pregnancy and child marriages dehumanise women and trap them in poverty and abuse, which bring into question our morals as a community,” said the chief.
The T/A hailed MHRRC and Men Engage Alliance for the community dialogue under Power to Youth Project, which also takes mobile courts to remote communities where GBV cases are prematurely terminated due to long walks to justice.
Change agents under the project have dissolved 89 child marriages in Mizinga’s area.
One of the survivors, Loveness, is now back in school and repeating Form Three.
According to T/A Mizinga the war on GBV also tackles harmful cultural practices such as fisi which compel young girls to have unprotected sex as part of the rite of passage to adulthood. Other practices include kusasa fumbi, kulowa kufa, which require a widow to sleep with a man to’ clear or rid her misfortune’ , TA Mizinga stated.
MHRRC executive director Emma Kaliya says teen pregnancy and child marriages, like sex for fish, mirror the plight of women fuelled by gender inequality.
“These physical and emotional burdens lock women in a cycle of poverty that, in turn, traps their children in the same fate,” she states, urging community leaders not to relent in combating harmful practices.
Kaliya calls for sustained support to raise GBV awareness beyond the annual 16 Days of Activism and strengthen gender equality laws and policies.