‘I tell my children not to play so we save money on soap’

Suzan­na Kathum­ba, a domes­tic work­er in Malawi, spends every day think­ing of ways she can economise to make her salary of 80,000 kwacha ($46; £34) a month stretch to sup­port her fam­i­ly.

As she wrings a wet cloth from a buck­et of water in the liv­ing room and starts by wip­ing down the tables and chairs, she con­sid­ers her lat­est ploy to save mon­ey

I’ve told my youngest chil­dren not to get too dirty when play­ing so we can save on soap,” the 43-year-old

“But it’s hard because chil­dren are chil­dren, they want to play.”

For the past few months Ms Kathum­ba, a divorced moth­er of four work­ing in the cap­i­tal, Lilong­we, has been strug­gling to sur­vive on her salary because of the surg­ing prices of goods in the mar­ket.

With lit­tle finan­cial sup­port from her ex-hus­band, she is the sole earn­er for the house­hold. Most of her mon­ey goes back to her four chil­dren, who live in their home town of Kasun­gu, around 130km (80 miles) north-west of cap­i­tal. The two youngest chil­dren are still in school and two old­er ones are unem­ployed

In May, the annu­al infla­tion rate in Malawi was 27.7% — one of the high­est in Africa — a decline from 29.2% in April

“What is sur­pris­ing is that salaries are stay­ing the same, but the price of com­modi­ties keeps going up on a dai­ly basis,” Ms Kathum­ba said.

“The mon­ey fin­ish­es before it even comes. We’re liv­ing a very hard life.”

A recent Ernst & Young report said that Malawi was one of the few coun­tries in the world it con­sid­ered to have what it called a “hyper­in­fla­tion­ary econ­o­my” — along with Burun­di, Sier­ra Leone, Sudan, Venezuela and Zim­bab­we. This is when there is cumu­la­tive infla­tion over three years of around 100% or more.

The account­ing firm said that accord­ing to the World Eco­nom­ic Out­look data­base, com­piled by the Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF), Malawi had a three-year cumu­la­tive rate of infla­tion of 116% as of Decem­ber 2024 and it fore­cast three-year cumu­la­tive rates of infla­tion of 102% for 2025 and 66% for 2026.

Data from the World Bank also shows that the coun­try is one of the poor­est in the world. It esti­mates that 70% of the south­ern African nation’s pop­u­la­tion lives on less than $2.15 a day.

The cur­rent cost-of-liv­ing cri­sis has left many cit­i­zens, like Ms Kathum­ba, with­out any sav­ings.

“I would be lying if I say that I save some mon­ey at the end of the month. I have absolute­ly noth­ing left,” she said.

“I pay 50,000 kwacha [$29] in school fees each term. Then you need to buy exer­cise books, food, soap — all from the same small salary. Sug­ar [1kg] is now 4,500 kwacha [$3].”

Econ­o­mists put Malaw­i’s cur­rent infla­tion prob­lems part­ly down to the short­age of for­eign mon­ey — known as “forex” — in the banks.

Malawi has often strug­gled with forex as the coun­try imports much more than it exports.

“We are not export­ing high-val­ue prod­ucts,” Dr Bertha Ban­gara Chikadza, senior lec­tur­er in macro­eco­nom­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Malawi and the pres­i­dent of the Eco­nom­ics Asso­ci­a­tion of Malawi

“We export prod­ucts like maize, soya beans and sug­ar, but import expen­sive prod­ucts such as fer­tilis­ers, med­i­cine and fur­ni­ture, so we need a huge amount of forex for this,” she said.

Busi­ness­es want­i­ng to import goods say that when they apply to the banks for forex — in par­tic­u­lar US dol­lars — they are often turned down because there is none avail­able.

This forces some to look for US dol­lars on the black mar­ket, where the exchange rate is high­er than the offi­cial rate of 1,750 kwacha for $1.

Traders can pay between 4,000 and 5,000 kwacha for $1 — which has a knock-on effect for con­sumers.

Busi­ness own­ers, like Mohammed Hanif Waka, who owns a sta­tionery shop in the cap­i­tal, says he has lost many cus­tomers since putting up prices.

“Sales have dras­ti­cal­ly dropped. We have had to make redun­dan­cies,”

While he would usu­al­ly import items for his shop, like office sup­plies, pens and notepads, the lack of for­eign exchange means he is now try­ing to access goods local­ly.

“I can’t remem­ber when our banks gave us forex,” he said.

Des­per­ate for change, infor­mal traders took to the streets to protest in Feb­ru­ary, hun­dreds block­ing the entrance to Malaw­i’s par­lia­ment.

“We are real­ly affect­ed, we are sup­posed to get a prof­it from our busi­ness­es,” Steve Magom­bo, the chair­man of Lilong­we’s Tso­ka Flea Mar­ket,