Main points

• In 2019, the presidential election was marred by massive irregularities and the results were annulled by the Constitutional Court. In the fresh presidential elections in 2020, an alliance by the Malawi Congress Party and the United Transformation Movement under the label of ‘Tonse’ was elected on an anti-corruption platform.
• The fallout from the 2013 ‘cashgate’ scandal continues to cast a long shadow over debates about corruption in the country.
• The second five-year National Anti-Corruption Strategy (NACS II) was launched in 2020, after a seven-year hiatus from the previous NACS, which ended in 2013.
• NACS II adopts a participatory, multi-stakeholder approach and its design involved extensive consultations with all three branches of government, civil society, the private sector, faith-based organisations as well as the mass media, youth, academia, and women’s organisations.
• The Anti-Corruption Bureau has enjoyed some recent successes in investigating corruption cases and making arrests.