A crisis counted in dollars
The arithmetic explains the queues. The National Oil Company of Malawi (NOCMA) says the country burns about 2 million litres of fuel a day and needs roughly $49 million in foreign exchange every month. That is $588 million a year, almost exactly the $600.6 million in total reserves recorded in July, equal to 2.4 months of import cover. The usual safe margin is three months. A landlocked country that imports some $3 billion of goods against $1 billion of exports cannot easily conjure the difference.
Suppliers once extended credit, letting the government pay 30 to 90 days after delivery. Now they want cash, and tankers wait at ports until someone pays.
Gold for fuel
Pretoria-style reassurance is in short supply. The Reserve Bank of Malawi sold 590 kilograms of gold to raise $78 million. The bank stresses this was artisanal gold bought from small-scale miners, and that its refined reserve gold at the New York Federal Reserve remains untouched. Even so, $30 million of proceeds went straight to fuel suppliers, which covers about 18 days of national demand. The full $78 million buys roughly six weeks. The government has also pulled non-essential state vehicles off the roads.
Stations running dry
At one Lilongwe station, daily supply has fallen from 30,000 litres to 5,000, and attendants say angry drivers routinely threaten them. Elsewhere, a motorcycle taxi rider in Blantyre has not worked for three weeks, while Lilongwe motorists wait up to three days and businesses lose customers. Minibus operators say fares are rising as some turn to a black market charging higher prices. Even the U.S. Embassy has urged its citizens to conserve fuel and limit unnecessary travel.
Why it is happening now
The chronic cause is a long drought of dollars. The kwacha was devalued 25% in May 2022 and 44% before the 2023 IMF programme, yet the official rate of about 1,749 per dollar still sits far from the street price. The IMF has noted informal-market premiums peaking at 150% in March 2025, which pushes dollars away from official channels.
The acute causes are newer. The crisis eased briefly after President Peter Mutharika’s election win and a price hike, then worsened again after the Iran war began in late February. Meanwhile, an IMF team visited in June and left without a new lending arrangement, and Mutharika rules out devaluing the kwacha, which the Fund wants to see float more freely. Malawi has had no IMF loan since May 2025.
Policy has added friction. The state plans to route about 60% of 2026/27 imports, roughly 412,000 tonnes, through NOCMA, with private importers covering the rest. That centralises a heavy financing burden on an institution that, in 2026, lost more than $400,000 to a payment scam.
Relief, but a fragile one
There are signs of movement. The Transporters Association of Malawi says about 287 tankers are due this week, after it appealed to the president to break a port deadlock; 100 trucks sent to Dar es Salaam had sat idle for over two weeks. The central bank has also honoured certain letters of credit, giving partial relief.
But tankers only fill tanks; they do not refill reserves. As the regulator’s spokesperson put it, immediate gaps should not obscure the structural problem of earning enough foreign currency to pay for essential imports. Until a credible IMF deal or a surge in export earnings arrives, Malawians will keep measuring their economy in days spent in a queue.
Written by:
*Dr Iqbal Survé
Past chairman of the BRICS Business Council and co-chairman of the BRICS Media Forum and the BRNN
*Sesona Mdlokovana
Associate at BRICS+ Consulting Group
Africa Specialist
**The Views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of Independent Media or IOL.
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