Scandal ridden Malawi Congress Party (MCP) led Tonse Alliance took Malawi’s reputation to a new low when it hosted Tanko Mauhamadou, a controversial leader of a Belgium registered Bridgin Foundation who has been promising billions of dollars in projects to gullible nations.
President Lazarus Chakwera led his cabinet ministers to signing a package worth K7trillion chiding critics and naysayers who doubt his capacity to deliver including the renamed Mombera University (now Inkosi ya Makosi Mbelwa University)
Senior cabinet members led by Finance Minister Sosten Gwengwe, Agriculture Minister Sam Kawale and Information Minister Gospel Kazako spearheaded an avalanche of social media posts touting the grant as a “game changer” and marking the delivery of major promises by the administration.
The Ugandan Government has deleted posts related to a 12 April 2022 event where Professor Tanko had pledged US$500 million projects which some are similar to Malawi projects. President Museveni was told he would have a medical hospital at Makerere University just as President Chakwera has been promised a medical city at Kamuzu University in Blantyre.
Professor Tanko promised a University in Nepal US$120 million grant in 2019 which has become a public debacle as Nepalese officials doubt the credibility of the Bridgin Foundation, while in Uzbekistan they are still waiting a multi million dollar agro-processing plant which is yet to start four years later.
Kazako did not respond to our questions sent to his official email address and WhatsApp numbers, but he has gone unusually quite after posting a controversial note that seemed to suggest that Malawians in all professions were being consumed by a spirit of “poverty and jealousy.”
The alleged grant is equivalent to Malawi’s three national budgets, slightly over national debt and almost half of the country’s GDP, which raises alarms that the state machinery could not sieve the bogus foundation.
