Reading Time: 3 minutesCommunication across Africa, whether between one country and another or within nations themselves, has for years been beset by significant logistical difficulties. Communication in this context encompasses both physical and electronic exchanges, vital for economic, social, and political interaction. Yet, even in the present day, the connections linking African countries remain fragile and often inadequate, […]

Reading Time: 3 minutesToday, I am set to embark upon a rather solitary journey. Solitary, because it is all too likely that many readers, upon realising that the subject I wish to address is not one of widespread popularity, will choose to disembark prematurely, leaving this vessel to sail with but a scant number of passengers aboard. The

Reading Time: 3 minutesIt often strikes me as a profound tragedy that so many Malawians find it almost impossible to believe in the scientific achievements of the recent past, such as the remarkable fact that men actually set foot on the moon during the 1960s and 70s. To present to them the idea that a spacecraft launched decades

Reading Time: 3 minutesWhen white settlers first encountered the majestic Great Zimbabwe, they promptly dismissed any notion that the dzimba dze mabwe (houses of stone) could have been the handiwork of Africans. They deemed the African race insufficiently advanced to undertake such a monumental engineering endeavour. A Portuguese explorer of the 16th century conjectured that Great Zimbabwe lay

Reading Time: 3 minutesIn a clandestine and now-infamous address delivered by South Africa’s President Botha to his cabinet in 1985, he brazenly and categorically declared that white people were unquestionably superior to black people in every conceivable sphere of life. He went beyond mere insinuation, suggesting with chilling certainty that black people constituted a fundamentally different species from

Reading Time: 3 minutesLast week, I took a deliberate pause from the usual toil of work to immerse myself in the quiet enchantment of some local marvels that never fail to evoke awe and wonder. Fortunately, these extraordinary sights did not require a long journey. One such gem, the Malape Pillars, lies within the Machinga district. I had

Reading Time: 3 minutesOne morning, several years ago, a sudden, sharp bang outside my home caught my attention. Upon enquiry, the watchman revealed that whilst burning some rubbish, he had placed a plastic bottle on the fire with its lid firmly sealed, causing it to burst unexpectedly. This incident, though startling, is a rather commonplace occurrence in Malawi,

Reading Time: 3 minutesJack Welch, the erstwhile CEO of the formidable American Conglomerate General Electric, once delivered a striking observation that resonates with enduring clarity: “If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is in sight,” or words to similar effect. This sage warning applies equally to individuals,

Reading Time: 3 minutesAn effective and practical strategy to stem the relentless tide of unwanted waste is to live by the three golden principles: reduce, reuse, and recycle. It is common sense that the volume of waste generated lessens when we curb our consumption of the very products that give rise to such waste. In this discussion, I

Reading Time: 3 minutesIn the 1980s, I was fortunate to be taught by an ICT lecturer at Watford College named Ian Watson, who shared a vision that now seems remarkably prescient. Watson predicted that, in the not-so-distant future, expert computer systems would be developed—machines capable of mimicking human experts by providing vast arrays of information across countless fields.