MALAWI
PLAY SOCCER MALAWI
Play Soccer Malawi uses sport as a catalyst to enable youth and their communities to change their lives. Together with its partners, it promotes sports projects, education, entrepreneurship and job creation for all its registered players and coach educators. It has been participating in Street League Football since 2008.
The programme brings structured small-sided games of football for the underserved to the rural areas of Malawi. It has a focus on teen mothers and other youth from poverty-stricken backgrounds that have been excluded from formal education or training opportunities.
Prominent Lawyer Alick Msowoya and his family have been supporting Play Soccer Malawi’s annual games since 2015 and the family has committed to fund the Street League until 2030.
Country statistics
174 out of 189 in Human Development Index rankings (UNDP, 2019)
$580 Average annual salary per person (World Bank, 2021)
Nearly 1 million people in Malawi are living with HIV and AIDS (CIA World Factbook)
Malawi is a small landlocked country in Southern Africa with a population of 20.3 million. Nearly 80% live in rural areas. Agriculture is the main source of income, which accounts for about one-third of GDP and 80% of export revenues. (CIA World Factbook) The reliance on agriculture makes the country vulnerable to the effects of climate change which is leading to prolonged dry spells and flash floods (WFP, 2021).
The majority of people live in poverty, with approximately four out of five families living in substandard homes.
Despite a largely rural population, urbanisation is increasing annually, leading to overcrowded cities. Some 76 percent of the 1.1 million population living in the capital, Lilongwe, live in slums with an average of six families per toilet. (Habitat, 2019)
Nearly 1 million people are living with HIV and AIDS, 12,000 people died of the infection in 2020 (CIA World Factbook).
Approximately 48,000 people who fled conflict in Burundi, Rwanda and the Republic of Congoare are living in overcrowded Dzaleka refugee camp in Malawi. The camp was built with an intended capacity of 14,000 people (Guardian, 2021).
STORIES from the region
