For some time, I have been looking for a mechanism that would enable my blog visitors to make online donations for Karonga earthquake victims. I searched all over the net, but without success. As I was about to give up, I discovered that the  Malawi Washington Association (MWA), a registered non-political, non-regional, inter-ethnic group organization based in the Washington DC Metropolitan area, has a Paypal button on its website that enables visitors to make online donations for the Karonga quake victims. I asked them for the code and they have gladly given it to me and here is the button:

Last summer, Josh Nesbit, a student of international health and bioethics at Stanford University,  and his friends came up with an interesting system that uses mobile technology in the delivery of health care in low resource settings. This system was first implemented at tiny St. Gabriel’s Hospital in Namitete, Malawi, in order to better serve the quarter million people living in the surrounding 100-mile radius. The system relies on SMS, or text messaging, plus a single laptop using a GSM modem and running FrontlineSMS, a free mass messaging program to non-profits. Continue reading this post…

A landmark project that converts gas from household waste into electricity was officially launched in Durban, South Africa, last week. While other countries have been generating energy from waste for sometime now, this project is the first of its kind in Africa. The plant captures harmful methane gas from a landfill site and produces eight megawatts of electricity.

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The Society of Malawian Students (SMS) in Japan, of which this blogger is a member, has donated 60,000Yen to help Karonga earthquake victims. This money was raised from contributions by members of the society. The handover ceremony of the funds to the Malawi Embassy in Japan took place yesterday at the Ambassador’s residence in Shibuya, Tokyo.

Chomora Mikeka handing over the money to the Ambassador, His Excellency Mr Roosevelt Gondwe

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It was great shock and sorrow to me when I read a message from Professor Lotfi Zadeh, the father of fuzzy logic, about the premature passing away of Professor Abe Mamdani, one of the prominent figures within the fuzzy logic community. Among other things, Prof Mamdani will be remembered for his pioneering work on fuzzy control which he did in the ’70s with his graduate student, Assilian. Continue reading this post…

The Maravi Post, a current affairs website, which aims to provide unbiased reporting on a wide range of developments in Malawi, was launched early this month. Prior to this,  Nyasatimes, Blantyre Newspapers Ltd (BNL), and Nation Online (which looks abandoned) were the only sites dedicated to Malawian news. Therefore, the introduction of  the Maravi Post is welcome development. Continue reading this post…

Malawi government has set a policy to deny advertisements to Nations Publications Limited (NPL), publishers of daily Nation, Weekend and Sunday Nation newspapers, allegedly due to the newspapers’ editorial slant. Some adverts which were booked for publication in the papers had been withdrawn. According to Maravi Post, the Monday’s edition of the Nation hardly carried any government advertisement while its competitor, the Daily Times of the Blantyre Newspapers Limited group, carried several state advertisements.Considering the fact that the media in Malawi heavily depends on government advertisements to survive, this is a huge blow to Nation’s Publications Limited. Continue reading this post…

The big news making rounds on the Internet today is that the German government has warned web users to find an alternative browser to Internet Explorer to protect security. This warning comes after Microsoft admitted that it was IE’s vulnerability that enabled the recent attacks on Google’s systems. Continue reading this post…

For some months now, I have been curious as to why Malawi was being left behind in the mobile money revolution that is transforming lives of thousands and thousands of poor people in the rural areas of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda in East Africa. Some folks told me that Zain wanted to introduce their Zap service in Malawi but they were encountering some  regulatory hurdles from the authorities. But all that is now history because Zain have announced the expansion of  the Zap service to Niger, Sierra Leone and Malawi. Continue reading this post…

It started as a plan for a small Christmas event for Chomora Mikeka, James and Yvonne Kenani, and my family. But we thought that it was going to be better if we had floated the idea to our friends within the Society of Malawian Students (SMS) in Japan. Someone also suggested that we inform the Malawi Embassy so that they should not be taken by surprise.

It was a memorable occasion

Towards the end of last year, the small Southern African nation of Malawi suffered the worst fuel crisis in its history. There were long queues at service stations across the country in search of fuel which scarcely came. Business was almost brought to a complete standstill.At the peak of the problem, for the first time, some folks were sleeping at the filling stations for several nights; transport fares went up.Economists calculated that for the month of November alone a loss of K111billion in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Continue reading this post…