The project is to connect the whole country by the end of the year by mounting fibre cables of the Electricity Supply of Corporation of Malawi (Escom)’s network of poles.
Malawi’s minister of information Nicholas Dausi expressed satisfaction with the work done so far, and said he was confident that the rollout will reach the entire population by the end of the year, according to reports in the African country.
“Malawi has been lugging behind in terms of internet connectivity. This is because we never had fibre connections. Today, we are witnessing the rolling out of the much awaited project which will put our country at par with others in terms of internet connectivity,” said Dausi.
“As a country, we will also take advantage of the connectivity to show to the world what our agriculture products are and through that way, we will be increasing our export and trade with other nations.”
The project will also be used to help strengthen the country’s Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS), controlling the siphoning of government resources.
Huawei has also constructed 37 connection points where internet will be loaded and offloaded as part of the project, which was first commissioned at the end of April.
Huawei Technologies managing director for Malawi Wan Wei said: "We are working hard so that before rains start, we should be through. We will have teams in all the districts and we expect to employ 350 people out of which 300 will be Malawians while 50 will be from China.”
