dollars for up to four years, a government statement said. Lazarus Chakwera was born in Lilongwe, the current capital of Malawi, on 5 April 1955 when the country was still under British colonial rule. Investors can keep export earnings in U.S. They also allow cannabis to be produced anywhere in Zimbabwe, instead of in restricted locations. Zimbabwe's new rules will allow investors to wholly own cannabis businesses, a departure from previous requirements to partner with the government. Malawi's parliament passed a bill in February last year that makes it legal to cultivate and process cannabis for medicines and hemp fibre used in industry, but stops short of decriminalising recreational use.Ĭhakwera said the agriculture ministry would "search for a basket of alternative crops so that by 2030, Malawi can do away with its reliance on tobacco."Ĭountries around the world are either legalising or relaxing laws on cannabis, including several in southern Africa such as Zambia, Lesotho and Zimbabwe. At the same time, cannabis has started to be accepted as a medicine. That compared with last year's lacklustre 1.9% growth owing to the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.ĭecades of public health education have gradually convinced people worldwide of the dangers of tobacco, leading to a sustained drop in sales. Malawi's President Lazarus Chakwera is sworn in in Lilongwe, Malawi, July 6, 2020. Tobacco was a stain on an otherwise booming agricultural sector, which the president said would enable economic growth to recover to 3.8% this year, according to the latest forecasts, and would push it to 5.4% next year. "Clearly we need to diversify and grow other crops like cannabis, which was legalized last year for industrial and medicinal use," he added. largest single crop contributor to our GDP, this reliance is now seriously threatened by declining demand worldwide," Chakwera said. is that while Malawi has come a long way by relying on tobacco as our. On Wednesday, neighbouring Zimbabwe's government also changed its regulations to encourage investment into cannabis. He became the 6th President of Malawi in June 2020. He stressed that the "democratic aspirations of the people must be respected" and urged the absolute monarch, King Mswati III, to "respect the wishes" of his subjects.įinally, Malawi's president expressed concern about the situation in northern Mozambique, which is battling a jihadist insurgency with the help of SADC and Rwandan troops, but said he was "very confident" the matter would be resolved.May 12 (Reuters) - Malawi President Lazarus Chakwera warned on Wednesday that his country's leading foreign exchange earner, tobacco, was in terminal decline and he urged a switch to high-growth crops like cannabis, which was legalised locally for some uses last year.Ĭhakwera made the comments during a state of the nation address in which he said tobacco was expected to earn less than $200 million in 2021, a figure roughly similar to the past two years but well below previous annual earnings that used to top $350 million. Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera (born 5 April 1955) is a Malawian theologian and politician. He questioned the wisdom of having millions of vaccines doses in rich countries while the rest of the world is dying from Covid-19.Ĭhakwera expressed concern about the deterioration of the situation in Eswatini, the small country formerly known as Swaziland. The Malawian president said he fully agreed with South Africa's Cyril Ramaphosa that there is a "vaccine apartheid" on Covid-19 jabs, demanding "equal access" for poor countries. It is alleged that President Chakwera took the less than an hour flight to Waterkloof from his base in Blantyre to rescue preacher and millionaire Shepherd Bushiri from the South African legal. He added that climate change was a "question of life and death" for Malawi, a poor and landlocked country. Our guest said he was optimistic for the forthcoming COP26 climate summit, despite warnings that it might not be successful. He regretted that such coups were back in fashion "in some parts" of the continent, but pointed to the recent elections in Zambia and in his country as examples of democratic progress. In an interview with FRANCE 24, Lazarus Chakwera, the president of Malawi and chairperson of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), condemned Monday's military coup in Sudan, stressing that this was "not the African way" to deal with differences. Brad George, Orosur Mining CEO reassesses their Colombian gold mine JV project with Newmont/Agnico.
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