Malawi Billionaire Ready To Transform Lilongwe

The South Africa based Malawian billionaire, Simbi Phiri, says he has several ambitious plans to help Malawi Government in transforming the outlook of the capital city, Lilongwe.

Speaking in an interview, Simbi, CEO of Khato Civils Private Limited said one of the first projects is to assist the Lilongwe Water Board to tap water from Lake Malawi to the capital in order to end the intermitted supply of water which has become the daily problem in the city as water levels in Lilongwe river which is main source of water for the board has gone extremely low.

At the very beginning of the Malawi Investment Forum on Monday, Simbi Phiri, signed MOU with the Minister of Agriculture representing the Government of Malawi, on ‘Lake Malawi Water Supply Project’ where his company will be involved in Engineering, Procure and Construct water supply system from Senga Bay in the Lake Malawi to Lilongwe.

“As you know there is big crisis of water in Lilongwe. Lilongwe is not just another town, this is the capital city of Malawi meaning you have all diplomats, important companies headquarters are based here. So, for not having water in here it cannot be a good thing for the country.” He noted 

“We thought, as company based in Johannesburg, having done so many other projects in in countries like South Africa, Botswana and other parts of Africa, we could probably give the Government solution to this crisis.” He said

He continued that this is the reason that he has expressed interest to do the project by signing MOU with Government following his proposal which Lilongwe Water Board is currently looking into.  

He said although there is no award yet but he hope to be awarded because his company has “the right solution for this project.”

“We are very ready because we have the right equipment. We believe that laying the pipes through the mountains from Senga Bay to Kanengo we cannot find any challenges because we have engineers, all the personnel required from designing and implementation of this project.”

However, he could not tell the exact figure on the cost of doing the project saying the cost for the project will depend on the cost of buying equipment from outside since Malawi does not have a robust manufacturing industry that can make things like pump stations.

Meanwhile, Mr. Simbi Phiri further says he is also interested to construct roads in Malawi a project that will involve Management and operation of toll roads.

“We are interested as a company through other companies working as a consortium in changing the road system. We would like to be involved in rehabilitating the deteriorating roads in Malawi. You can see the size of roads are all cracked and there are no funds to repair by the state. But today in the world most roads are paid by the users. 

Very few governments are building the roads, so you tow the roads and then the user pay. So we intend to propose this to state and also is an area of interest to help the main roads be rehabilitated.”

He said National Roads Authority will instruct them which roads would be required for such project.