On Chewa - Afrobarometer

Someone recently dumped several documents of Afrobarometer on Malawi in Chingwe’s Hole. They dealt with a number of issues which I will present one by one over the coming days, depending, of course,  on how much sunlight is allotated to the Hole, given the power rationing here in Zomba.

The pleasant surprise for us here in the Hole was that across all the three regions the majority of the population  (62 percent) accepts Chewa as the country’s official language. Surprisingly, given the popular perception, there is more opposition to this in the South than in the North. This could partly be because of the fact Chewa was seen to politically replace Nyanja.

Support for Chichewa as an Official Language at Regional Level

Issue	Region
	Central %	North %	South %	Total %
Support for Chichewa as Official Language	67	59	57	62
Against Chichewa as an Official Language	30	38	42	40
Don’t Know	-	1	-	-
Neither	2	1	1	1
Total	100	100	100	100

Source: AfBS Malawi, 2008