Light After the Flood: How Malawi's Displaced Communities are Rebuilding with Clean Energy
On the International Day of Progress for Least Developed Countries, Malawi’s experience shows what progress can look like in places facing overlapping climate, displacement and energy challenges: practical solutions that bring light, safer cooking and new resilience to communities rebuilding after disaster.
Cyclone Freddy took everything from thousands of families across Malawi. Homes disappeared under floodwater. Farmland vanished. Entire livelihoods were swept away in days. The families who survived found themselves starting over in relocation sites across Chikwawa and Chiradzulu, places with little infrastructure and even less certainty about what comes next.
Displacement brought its own quiet hardships. Women and children walked for hours to find firewood. Families cooked outdoors, exposed to wind and rain. Nightfall meant darkness, candles and worry.
A joint programme funded by the Joint SDG Fund and implemented by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) set out to change that story. Over twelve months, the programme combined renewable energy infrastructure, clean cooking technology, local governance and skills training into a single, integrated response to displacement and energy poverty.
In Champhanda, Matsukambiya, Chikuse and Mussa, families received clean and energy efficient cookstoves that cut firewood use and let people cook safely under shelter, rain or no rain. In Champhanda itself, IOM went further, installing a 6-kilowatt solar mini-grid built from 15 solar panels and four battery storage units, now supplying electricity directly to 30 households along with floodlights for shared community spaces. The system was built to meet the standards of the Malawi Energy Regulatory Authority, and IOM has already secured funding to scale it up to 10 kilowatts.
For Mercy Singano in Chikuse, the difference is already visible. "Life in a relocation site can be challenging because it doesn't feel like home," she said. "Even cooking is hard, we fetch firewood daily and cook outside. These stoves will make a big difference. They're easy to carry and store, and they let us cook under shelter when it rains."
Light After Dark
Phillip Emmanuel knows exactly what the mini-grid means. "Before the mini-grid, nights were dark and full of worry," he said. "My children couldn't study after sunset, and we relied on candles that were expensive and unsafe. Now my wife can cook without rushing before dark, my children can read and dream bigger, and we feel safer. It feels like home."
The programme reached well beyond Chikwawa and Chiradzulu. In Dzaleka Refugee Camp, UNHCR supported the installation of a pellet-making machine that turns dry organic waste, groundnut shells, maize stalks, grass and leaves into clean cooking fuel. The machine has already produced 15,000 cooking pellets for 1,400 households, while the broader intervention is reaching roughly 10,000 people across 2,500 households in the camp, cutting dependence on firewood and charcoal and opening a possible micro-enterprise opportunity for residents.
None of this was built to be temporary. Fourteen local artisans, mostly youth, were trained to install and maintain solar systems, building a local skills base that will outlast the project itself. A Village Energy Committee, formed under the site's Natural Resource Management Committee, now oversees the mini-grid's daily operation, while households contribute a modest monthly fee of MWK 1,000, about $0.58, to fund its upkeep. The district council has also committed to linking the committee to a savings and loan association to support longer-term financial resilience.
This matters because progress in least developed countries is often tested by whether solutions can continue after a project ends. In Champhanda, the model is not only bringing power to households; it is building local capacity to keep that power running.
From Local Recovery to National Climate Planning
The programme's reach extended into national policy too, contributing to the review of Malawi's Nationally Determined Contributions and National Adaptation Plan to ensure displacement and human mobility are recognised as part of the country's climate response.
The work isn't finished. IOM will scale up the model in 2026 through the EU-funded Regional Responses to Climate Displacement programme, expanding both the Champhanda mini-grid's capacity and the cookstove intervention to new households and new districts.
Malawi will keep facing climate shocks. But this programme shows what's possible when clean energy, community ownership and strong partnership move together: families with less to fear after dark, less time spent searching for firewood and a model now proven sturdy enough to grow.
Note:
All joint programmes of the Joint SDG Fund are led by UN Resident Coordinators and implemented by the agencies, funds and programmes of the United Nations development system. With sincere appreciation for the contributions from the European Union and Governments of Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Republic of Korea, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the Arab Gulf Programme for Development for a transformative movement towards achieving the SDGs by 2030.
This story was originally published by the Joint SDG Fund. Please visit the UN team's website for more information about the UN's work in Malawi.
