Parliamentary election campaign costs winner K88.8m

Running for Parliament in Malawi now costs K88.8 million on average, a price that is shutting out many citizens and testing the country’s democracy, study findings show. Research findings by Institute for Policy Interaction (IPI) in partner-ship with the University of Texas of the United States of America show that during the campaign for the September 16 2025 Gen-eral Election, parliamentary candidates spent six times more than they did in 2019. In 2019, the average campaign expenditure was K14.8 million.

For candidates who polled above 20 percent of the vote, average spending rose to K166.6 million, according to the study. At K88.8 million, the report, titled ‘Çost of politics in Ma-lawi’ argues that the country risks a Parliament dominated by the wealthy, a development that may have direct implications for rep-resentation, accountability and public trust. Lead researcher Michael Wahman, a public affairs expert at the University of Texas in Austin, said the sharp rise in campaign costs threatens democratic representation.

“Already in 2019 we said it was high, but now it’s six times as high. This has huge consequences. It excludes most Malawians from ever having a shot at being in this primary democratic institution,” he said.

[paywall]

Westminster Foundation for Democracy regional director for Africa Michael Nevin said the findings should trigger urgent debate on po-litical finance reforms. “The cost of politics is rising, rising, rising, not just in Malawi, but eve-rywhere. Who is excluded if money keeps being the central issue to run in politics?

It tends to be women, young people, certainly peo-ple with disabilities, and others,” said the former British High Com-missioner to Malawi. The report tracked spending at every stage of the race and estab-lished that some candidates spent an average of K30.5 million to win a political party nomination. Here the stakes are high based on the perception that securing the ticket of a dominant political party is the surest path to Parliament.

The study broke down the costs of general election campaign as follows: Constituency projects: K14.8 million on average, including road re-pairs, boreholes and other infrastructure. Some candidates spent over K20 million.

[/paywall]