A WEB

From 11^th to 15^th February 2023 the Malawi Electoral Commission hosted a seven-member delegation from the Independent Electoral Commission of Botswana on an electronic voter registration benchmark visit.

Botswana is preparing to conduct general elections later this year and is planning to migrate to an electronic voter registration system for improved efficiency and credibility of its elections.

According to Malawi Electoral Commission Chairperson, Justice Dr. Chifundo Kachale the visit by IEC Botswana demonstrated the appreciation of the quality of the system used in Malawi.

“From the perspective of the Commission, the visit by Botswana is a vote of confidence in the expertise with which MEC has administered the electronic voter registration system and that our fellow EMBs from the African region would recognize Malawi as a possible destination to come and benchmark their own plans to do similar activities in as far as electoral processes are concerned,” said Kachale. 

With the adoption of electronic voter registration about five years ago, Malawi Electoral Commission managed to have a clean voter register, a departure from the challenges it was facing with the optical mark recognition voter registration system it used in previous elections.

Dr Kachale said the visit by Botswana IEC was also in line with the principles of peer learning which is encouraged among SADC electoral management bodies.

“As a sister electoral management body, we are happy to share our knowledge and experience so that we also contribute to the improvement of election management in the region,” he said. 

Speaking after their visit to Malawi, the leader of the seven-member delegation, Ms Doreen Seremula thanked the Malawi Electoral Commission for positively responding to host them. 

Ms Seremula, who is also the deputy (executive) secretary for IEC Botswana said they settled for Malawi because they can easily relate the experiences to their countries.

She said their visit had been successful as they a learnt a lot on how Malawi migrated to the biometric voter registration, capture field details and process them to mold the voters’ register.

“Botswana is in the process of introducing electronic voter registration for improved efficiency and credibility of its elections. The purpose of the benchmarking exercise is to gain in-depth understanding on the automation of electoral processes particularly capturing of voter registration information, data security and quality management,” she said.

Malawi has also hosted delegations from Uganda and Lesotho on learning visit on how to do civic and voter education.