Nationwide Blackout Hits Malawi after Grid Shutdown

A nationwide blackout in Malawi underscores ongoing grid reliability challenges, raising concerns over infrastructure resilience and the impact on businesses and essential services.

Malawi has been thrown into a nationwide blackout following a system shutdown that disrupted electricity supply across the country on Friday.

The Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi said the outage began at about 10:03 a.m., affecting homes, businesses and critical services.

In a brief statement seen by AEP, the utility said engineers had been deployed to investigate the cause of the shutdown and would provide updates as more information becomes available.

Although no timeline has been given for restoration, ESCOM described the incident as a system shutdown, typically associated with a total grid collapse.

The company apologised for the disruption, noting that efforts were underway to restore supply as quickly as possible.

The latest outage adds to ongoing challenges in Malawi’s power sector, which has faced persistent reliability issues in recent years.