In 2023, Cyclone Freddy tore through southern Malawi. Among the infrastructure it destroyed was the Naming’azi Bridge in Machinga East, where most households depend on subsistence farming. Replacing it cost roughly 50 million kwacha, or about 29,000 US dollars. In Mulanje Bale, 11 million kwacha, or about 6,000 US dollars, went to rehabilitating the Mponda Bridge after earlier storm damage. Climate disasters now shape what communities in Malawi can build and keep, which makes this a question for democracy as well as engineering. When elected officials are under pressure to show quick, visible results, projects built before the next election often fail before the next storm.

IDEA graduate researcher Jack Fernandes, a PhD candidate in political science at Ohio State, set out to test whether IDEA’s Deliberative Town Halls (DTHs) could change that pattern. Could deliberating with their Member of Parliament (MP) shift citizens’ preferences toward longer-lasting infrastructure, and give elected officials a reason to support it?

Why Malawi

Malawi is the sixth country where IDEA has carried out research with its DTH model, and it may be the hardest test so far. It is a rural, low-technology country exposed to floods and droughts, where the institutions of representation are not always closely connected to the communities they serve. About 80 percent of Malawians depend on subsistence farming, so short-term hardship is immediate while long-term climate risk can feel distant. Cyclone Idai in 2019 and Cyclone Freddy in 2023 damaged roads, bridges and farms across the south of the country.

The timing also mattered. Local infrastructure in Malawi is paid for largely through the Constituency Development Fund. Under reforms introduced over the past year, a Constituency Development Committee made up of representatives from lower-level committees now has far more say over how that money is spent. The DTHs took place just as these new rules were coming in.

Working with two Deputy Speakers

IDEA partnered with two senior members of Malawi’s National Assembly. Hon. Victor Musowa is First Deputy Speaker and MP for Mulanje Bale. Hon. Esther Jolobala is Second Deputy Speaker and MP for Machinga East. She is the first woman elected to represent her constituency and serves on Parliament’s Natural Resources and Climate Change Committee.

How the DTHs worked

IDEA usually invites local residents to its DTHs. In Malawi, the team invited members of Village Development Committees instead. These village committee members are elected volunteers who identify their villages’ needs and bring them to local government. Working through the committees grounded the DTHs in an institution communities already use.

Surveyors from the Institute of Public Opinion and Research, based in Zomba, interviewed the village committee member representing every officially registered village in the two constituencies: 164 in Machinga East and 126 in Mulanje Bale. At the end of each interview, the surveyor flipped a coin to decide whether that member would be invited to the DTH, and members could use their own coin. Because chance decided who was invited, comparing invited and uninvited members afterward shows what the DTH itself changed.   

The DTHs were held in person and in Chichewa. The Machinga East DTH took place on April 18, 2026, and fieldwork in both constituencies ended in May 2026. The surveys before and after the DTHs asked about development priorities, flood and drought risk, and views of the MP. The study was conducted under the ethical oversight of The Ohio State University and the University of Malawi.

Key findings

1. Roads and water come first. Transport and roads were named among the top three issues by 84 percent of village committee members in Machinga East and 88 percent in Mulanje Bale. Water and sanitation came next (49 and 67 percent), followed by education (41 and 47 percent).

2. Committee members already favor durable projects. Across six paired choices between a more resilient option and a shorter-term one, 86 percent of members in Machinga East and 91 percent in Mulanje Bale leaned toward resilience overall. Asked whether every village should get an unreliable borehole or half of the villages a reliable one, 91 percent in Machinga East and 98 percent in Mulanje Bale chose reliability.

3. In Mulanje Bale, the DTH raised approval of the MP and members’ sense of influence. Invited members rated Hon. Musowa’s job performance 0.64 points higher on a five-point scale than members who were not invited. They were also more likely to feel that their committees can influence how the development fund is spent, by 0.55 points on a four-point scale.

4. In Machinga East, views of the MP had little room to rise. Hon. Jolobala’s approval among committee members was already 4.7 out of 5 before the DTH, and no outcome changed by a statistically significant amount. The DTH also did not increase ethnic attachment, a concern often raised in research on deliberation.

5. Participants want more DTHs. Every attendee who answered the follow-up survey, 89 in Machinga East and 64 in Mulanje Bale, said they would like more DTHs, and most wanted them every month or every three months. In Machinga East, 89 percent were extremely satisfied and 96 percent found the DTH very useful. In Mulanje Bale, the figures were 75 and 89 percent.

What the MPs made of it

Each MP has received a report on their own DTH. Hon. Jolobala told Rex Gama, the project’s research assistant and liaison with the two MPs, that the DTHs were “a game changer” because they eased the pressure on her. She plans to print her report and share it with local stakeholders. Both MPs have talked about recommending DTHs to other MPs. They have also offered to speak with the Ministry of Local Government, which oversees the development fund, about using local funds to hold DTHs. Read more in Deliberative Town Halls in Malawi, IDEA’s conversation with Jack Fernandes and Rex Gama.

What comes next

IDEA is considering a follow-up phase that could track how the development fund is spent in Machinga East and Mulanje Bale and extend the work to more constituencies. The team also plans to share the findings with Malawi’s Parliament and the University of Malawi.

Read more

• IDEA Report Machinga East 2026 | Download PDF

• IDEA Report Mulanje Bale 2026 | Download PDF

• Deliberative Town Halls and Development Priorities in Malawi, IDEA’s news story on the 2026 DTHs.

• More on IDEA’s Deliberative Town Hall model.