Some Development Issues and Debates

  A Common-Law and Comparative Analysis   1. Introduction and framing of the issue I write this opinion from the standpoint of our law in Malawi, which is grounded in English common law and shaped by constitutional principles of legality, accountability, and the protection of public resources. The immediate context is the recent decision of the Malawi Supreme Court of Appeal in Finance Bank of Malawi Limited (in Voluntary Liquidation) v Reserve Bank of Malawi & Another (MSCA Civil Appeal No. 21 of 2016), delivered on 3 February 2026. The issue addressed here is not whether unlawful administrative action should attract judicial scrutiny. That proposition has now been conclusively settled by the Supreme Court. The issue is whether, and to what extent, a finding of unlawfulness justifies monetary compensation , particularly where the sums claimed are large, speculative, and potentially destabilising to the public fiscus. In my view, and consistent with common-law aut...

 Greenwell Matchaya LLB PhD Recent events in global affairs have once again brought to the surface a longstanding tension at the heart of the international system: the gap between the principles that govern relations among states and the realities of power that shape how those principles are applied. Sovereignty, territorial integrity, and non-intervention remain foundational norms of international law, reaffirmed in treaties, charters, and diplomatic practice. Yet their practical enforcement appears uneven, contingent, and increasingly dependent on material capability rather than universal restraint. This tension is not new. What is striking is its persistence, despite decades of institutional development, legal refinement, and multilateral coordination. The international system has invested heavily in building rules, norms, and forums for cooperation, yet the recurrence of cross-border interventions, indirect conflicts, and selective accountability suggests that the challenge m...

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Greenwell Matchaya, PhD Email: Greenwellmatchaya@yahoo.com Malawi’s economy at present is between a 100 to 200 (or more years) behind many African countries and indeed behind advanced countries of Europe and North America. A simple economic growth calculation reveals that, to move from the current Gross National Income of circa $389 per capita to US$1037 per capita threshold for being categorized as a lower middle income country, and assuming the current 5% average growth    rates of incomes per capita, it will take Malawi at least 63 years. Similarly, under the same assumptions, it will take Malawi, 111 years, 165 years, 188 years and 306 years to reach levels of per capita incomes enjoyed by Ghana, Namibia, Botswana, and Germany respectively. This is unacceptable and we must collectively reduce these ginormous time gaps in less than two decades by doing business differently, or we will perish. The encouraging ...

By Greenwell Matchaya For me, this week of August, shall live in infamy since 2008. I had woken up early on one lazy Saturday morning on the 23 rd August 2008 . I did not go to work that morning as I was generally preparing to leave for the United States to continue with my doctoral studies. My mind was pre-occupied with how I was going to survive the winter that was sure to come, despite the fact that I had survived even more ruthless cold conditions in the Scandinavian region a few years before. The UK at the time was not bad in terms of weather. Aside from the unpredictable daily weather, the worst that could happen in terms of temperatures at the time, where I lived, was a minus 4 Degrees Celsius. Everything changed abruptly that morning, with a phone call from my cousin in Malawi reporting that my father whom I fondly call, among other names, “ the Insightful one” had died. The circumstances of the death were traumatizing. Apparently, he and his friends wer...