This is an excerpt from a feature article that was originally published in Canada’s Toronto Star on September 6, 2011. It was coauthored with Archibald Kasakura.

By Travis Lupick and Archibald Kasakura

BLANTYRE, MALAWI—A silent line of cars and buses rolls down a hill leading out of Blantyre, Malawi. It’s an eerie thing. So quiet, save for the faint sound of rubber rolling over asphalt. Every vehicle’s engine is turned off — their drivers, desperate to save every drop of fuel.

There are much louder signs that this southern African country is missing out on the continent’s slow climb from poverty. On July 20, demonstrations caught the world’s attention, when protests turned to riots that left 19 dead.

Since then, a shaky UN-brokered dialogue between civil society leaders and President Bingu wa Mutharika has begun. But a second round of nationwide demonstrations is scheduled for Sept. 21, and the anxiety surrounding that date is palpable.

“Enough is enough,” the president shouted in an emotional speech on Aug. 25. “If my opponents want war, so be it. I will take them head on. Let the country go on fire.”

Forgotten amidst the violence and the rhetoric are the reasons the protests are happening.

Malawi’s economy is in steep decline. Worse, the country has never prospered as did neighbouring Zimbabwe. For Malawi, the “warm heart of Africa,” this is a fall from poverty into desperation.

Tobacco earnings once accounted for 70 per cent of the country’s exports and 15 per cent of its GDP are down 57 per cent from the year before. A lack of foreign reserves has led to chronic fuel shortages and commodity prices have soared.

On the streets, the minibus drivers, street vendors, and seasonal labourers working Malawi’s fields, say that each month, they have less money than the last.

Compounding matters is the behaviour of the president, whose increasingly authoritarian behavior has sent donors running. Since the beginning of 2011, the International Monetary Fund, European Union, Britain, Germany, Norway, and most recently, the United States, have frozen a combined $750 million in assistance — devastating to a country that relies on foreign aid for as much as 40 per cent of its national budget.

But Mutharika was democratically elected and is not scheduled to leave office until 2014. As the president grooms his brother Peter for succession, people are already asking, is Malawi Africa’s next broken state?

Continue reading this article at the Toronto Star.

This is an excerpt from a feature article that was originally published in Canada’s Toronto Star on September 6, 2011.