When darkness falls in parts of Malawi today, the cause is not always a fault in the system or a shortage of power generation capacity. Increasingly, it is the work of vandals.
From the dusty trading centers of Thyolo to the forests of Phalombe, from water treatment plants in Lilongwe to transformers in Chikwawa, Chiradzulu, Zomba, and Blantyre, Malawi’s electricity infrastructure is under sustained attack by criminals targeting aluminium conductors, copper wires, transformers and other critical components for resale and recycling.
