Malawi’s fuel crisis has entered its second week, and there is no sign of a quick way out. Queues at filling stations keep growing. With no clear idea of when deliveries will resume, many drivers spend the night, sometimes several days, in their vehicles so they don’t miss the next refill. According to local outlet Malawi24, authorities have still given no update on when things might improve.
The effects are being felt everywhere. Getting to work has become a struggle, and businesses are losing customers. Coxley Kamange, secretary general of the Minibus Owners Association, is urging the government to act now. Rising transport fares are pushing some passengers to give up on minibuses and walk instead. On some routes, fares have doubled.
At the root of the crisis is a chronic shortage of dollars. Landlocked Malawi imports its refined fuel through ports in Mozambique and Tanzania and pays mostly in US dollars, which have been scarce for months. Happy Jere, chair of the Fuel Retailers Association, is blunt: until the currency problem is solved, the queues will not really get shorter. The state-owned National Oil Company of Malawi is seeking new contracts and alternative payment arrangements with international suppliers.
The shortage is also fuelling smuggling. In early October, Zambian police arrested 19 Malawians suspected of trying to move more than 5,400 litres of petrol to Lilongwe.
The country is hoping for relief from the IMF. Talks on a loan programme, which ended on October 6, made considerable progress according to the fund, but no deal has been signed yet. For Malawians, this is already the second crisis this year: in the spring, the government admitted that reserves had run dry and it had no foreign currency left to pay for imports.