Mzuzu Meet for Urban Development
“Amakhala ku Blantyre, koma amagona mothinana!
Amakhala ku city iii, koma amagona pa masaka!”
(They live in Blantyre, but live in congestion
They stay in the city, but they sleep on sacks!)
This old song by one talented musician Peter Mawanga played softly in Mzuzu city civic hall on Friday, April 11, 2025.
It wasn’t a music concert! Neither was it a disco nor a party to welcome the weekend! It was a meeting, and the song was just used as a tune to a short insert in a presentation by Programs Manager for Center for Community Organization and Development (CCODE) Wonderful Hunga.
CCODE in partnership with Ministry of Local Government (Department of Urban Development) and Habitat for Humanity Malawi, conducted a consultative meeting with Mzuzu stakeholders on National Urban Policy (NUP) and National Slum Upgrading and Prevention Strategy (NSUPS).
“Government and different organizations have been conducting developmental projects to upgrade slums without guidelines. We have been using different approaches which was not helping much. Now we want to come up with one strategy to be followed by all organizations when doing slum upgrading projects,” said Hunga in his presentation.
On the National Urban Policy, Wiseman George Kamwiyo from the Department of Urban Development in the Ministry of Local Government, Unity and Culture said the policy which was prepared in 2019 to create an enabling environment for the attainment of sustainable urbanization, expired last year, “now we want to formulate a successor policy.”
Mawanga’s song, Amakhala ku Blantyre, which conquered Malawi’s airwaves in the early 2000 and brought the musician to limelight, expresses challenges faced by the urban poor especially those who live in slums like Mtopwa in Blantyre, Chinsapo in Lilongwe and Chiwabvi in Mzuzu.
This meeting by CCODE and partners aimed to address some of the challenges. It was one of the consultative meetings the organizations are conducting with stakeholders in all the cities in the country to review and renew the NUP and formulate the Malawi NSUPS.
Different stakeholders attended the meeting. Apart from officials from CCODE, Habitant for Humanity and Ministry of local government headquarters, there were representatives from Malawi Housing Corporation, Malawi Red Cross Society, Northern Region Waterboard, Mzuzu Federation committee and Mzuzu City Council.
“With these consultations we’ll come up with what we need to help in sustainable urbanization. We’ll continue to consult so that we produce solid documents,” said Mercy Duwe, Director of Urban Development in the Ministry of Local Government, Unity and Culture.
