As the forex crunch continues in Malawi, I continue to get overwhelming requests from my Malawi based friends to help them with payments for used cars here in Japan. Basically, these people ask me to pay the Yens this side and in turn, they promise to deposit an equivalent amount (in Malawi Kwacha) in my Malawi bank account.

I, however, cannot help anyone at the moment because I do not have enough money this side for such transactions. Besides that, accumulating the MKs in Malawi when you do not have any immediate commitment also does not seem to be a good idea as the money will just be losing value with time. So far, it looks like most of my Malawian friends here are not interested in these kinds of transactions for the the same reasons.

But I have a suggestion which may be useful to someone out there. There are a lot of Malawians in the diaspora who remit cash to Malawi for different purposes. If you want to import a used car and you are stuck because of the ongoing forex problems, you can hijack that cash. If you have Malawian friends in the diaspora who send money to Malawi regularly, you can ask them to deposit the money in the car dealer’s account and in turn, you must deposit an equivalent amount (in MK) in their Malawi bank accounts. Of course, you will have to agree on the right exchange rate.

Once again, I currently do not have enough Yens to help in these kinds of transactions. If I get a windfall, I will give you a shout

Related posts:

1. Mobile Money service thrives in East Africa.When will it come to Malawi?
2. Zain Zap finally comes to Malawi!
3. What about some meetups for Malawi based bloggers?
4. African Universities have similar problems