Malawi's Banda needs some arithmetic lessons.

Malawi's new President Joyce Banda had a recent interview with CNN's Athena Jones. The interview was wide ranging from Malawi's relationship with the IMF, donors and the African Union; the devaluation of the Kwacha and the late President Bingu waMutharika's legacy. I've to admit, I'm not a fan of her for many reasons, chief among them, her appetite to please western donors even if it means putting her country's sovereignity at risk. Her unpan-african attitude is quite baffling. Choosing not to side with the African Union position on Sudan's Omar al-Bashir over an ICC arrest warrant prefering to sing on the same tune with the west even when countries such as the US don't even recognize the ICC's jurisdiction. Western countries continue to ignore recognized war crimes and crimes against humanity by Israel on the Palestinians but Banda cannot see that the al-Bashir saga is just a politicized issue by the West.

My focus today isn't on all those foreign policy issues but on her arithmetic. This might look like a blunt issue at first hand but if you look deeper you will notice that her weak arithmetic exposes her crude agenda we know today of first trying to please western powers at all cost and secondly trying to tanish the legacy of the late waMutharika. In the CNN interview she says

The bad news is that the former president refused to devalue the kwacha for four years. Because what that could have meant was maybe they could have devalued the kwacha by 10% a year. It would still have been 40% by now.

Devaluing 10% a year for four years doesn't amount to 40% considering in this context the discounting is compounded not in simple terms. This exposes her explanation of the 40% devaluation as a blunt lie because the math doesn't add up so we can conclude that the devaluation was forced onto her by the IMF and company. As always, waMutharika takes the blame. Banda is going to be a disaster.