Some Development Issues and Debates

  The international system is entering a period of intensified strategic competition among major powers. This is neither abnormal nor unexpected. Throughout history, periods of technological transition, energy reconfiguration, and security realignment have produced sharper geopolitical positioning. The issue for Africa is not whether competition exists. It is whether the continent prepares adequately for it. In an environment defined by control of critical minerals, advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, energy transitions, and evolving security alliances, regions that lack coordinated intellectual capacity, industrial depth, and credible defence capability risk becoming theatres of influence rather than independent strategic actors. For the African Union and its member states, this moment calls for deliberate long horizon planning at continental scale. That includes building a critical mass of organised intellectual and policy institutions capable of fifty year s...

  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...