Malawi eases financial pressure on community radio stations

BLANTYRE, Malawi — Community radio stations in Malawi have received an unexpected boost from the government. The Ministry of Information, Communication and Technology has donated motorbikes to all 25 community radio stations across the country to help journalists reach remote and hard-to-access areas when gathering news.

Speaking during familiarization meetings with community radio representatives in December, Minister of Information and Digitalization Shadreck Namalomba said the support is part of the government’s appreciation for the vital role community radio stations play in educating citizens. He highlighted their contribution during the September elections that brought the current administration into power.

The government also announced plans to review broadcasting license fees, following years of complaints from media houses over high costs. “We do not want to see any radio station shut down simply because it cannot afford license fees,” Namalomba said during the motorbike handover ceremony.

A critical time

Radio stations in Malawi have long struggled to pay annual license fees required by the Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority. Failure to meet these requirements has led MACRA to close several stations. According to the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA Malawi), since 2022, more than 15 broadcasters have been shut down for failing to pay their annual license fees. It says current annual content license fees stand at US$100 for community radio stations, US$1,500 for regional stations, and US$5,000 for national broadcasters, including television stations.

MISA Malawi says broadcasters also face additional costs, including tower co-location fees charged by telecommunications companies. Television stations must also pay signal distribution fees to the Malawi Digital Broadcast Network Limited. However, some community radio representatives told the minister that, in practice, they end up paying about US$1,000 per year when all costs are combined, an amount they say is too high for most stations. The government has not yet announced the new rates or the effective date.

Station manager for Dzimwe Community Radio in the Mangochi District, Justin Sumaili, said that the motorbike donation came at a critical time for the station. “Many members of our radio listening clubs live in hard-to-reach areas, where roads cannot be accessed by ordinary vehicles,” Sumaili said. “We were failing to reach some rural communities to record our programs. That challenge has now been addressed. This week alone, two producers recorded programs in areas we had never reached before due to impassable roads,” he said.

Namalomba also announced that, for the first time, community radio stations will benefit from the Constituency Development Fund, a monthly budget managed by local councils and approved by Parliament during the 2006–2007 budget session.

Holding leaders accountable

However, audit reports have repeatedly shown that the fund has been vulnerable to mismanagement due to poor transparency and accountability. For example, in 2020, Malawi’s Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee summoned three district councils for the misuse of CDF allocations. This followed a special audit report that uncovered serious mismanagement of funds in Dowa, Nsanje and Karonga districts between 2014 and 2016.  The report cited ineligible expenditures, failure to deliver project materials, and the supply of defective materials for development projects.

In January last year, the Canadian government partnered with MISA Malawi to train 90 journalists from community radio stations in investigative journalism. The aim was to strengthen monitoring of local development funds, including the CDF. Blessings Melo, founder and executive director of Chibvomelezi FM in Chikwawa District, said that involving community radio stations as CDF beneficiaries will improve accountability. “Our main role will be to cover and broadcast development projects funded through the CDF,” Melo said. “This exposure will discourage misuse of public funds.”

Critics argue that making community radio stations beneficiaries of the same funds they are expected to monitor could compromise their independence and impartiality. They warn that this arrangement may create a conflict of interest when reporting on the misuse or abuse of the CDF. Instead, the critics suggest that community radio stations should receive separate, independent funding specifically for monitoring CDF-funded projects.

Sumaili dismisses these concerns. He says the funding will strengthen struggling stations that have long lacked the capacity to monitor development projects in their communities effectively. Research on the financial sustainability of community radio stations in Malawi has found that they struggle to sustain themselves, which affects their ability to fulfill their roles. Sumaili says the CDF funding will help address that. “For years, we have been blamed for failing to follow up on development projects because we had no resources to reach these areas,” Sumaili said. This support gives us the tools to do our job properly and hold leaders accountable, not silence us,” he said.

The author reports on the industry from Blantyre, Malawi.

This article first appeared in the January/February 2026 edition of RedTech Magazine. You can read or download this edition for free here. You can access past editions of RedTech Magazine, also for free, here.

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