By Chisomo Phiri
President Dr.Lazarus Chakwera has unveiled plans for his administration to construct the Chilembwe School of Excellence in Chiradzulu District, honoring the legacy of late Reverend John Chilembwe.
The President made the announcement on Wednesday at the John Chilembwe Day and Memorial Service of Worship at Providence Industrial Mission (PIM) in Chiradzulu.
Chakwera said the school will include a $150 million investment in the construction of a state-of-the-art Chilembwe Football Stadium with a 40 000 seating capacity encompassing a shopping mall, restaurant, gym and clinic.
He said the other features of the project will include a fully-fledged football academy with 150 rooms for boys and girls and a Malawi Sports Village with courts for netball, basketball, volleyball, athletics and swimming, all under one roof.
“Four months ago I already approached a group of investors from Italy who are now getting ready to bring the resources necessary for the development of the Chilembwe School of Excellence here in Chiradzulu because the Reverend Chilembwe believed that the key to our developmental progress is using education to increase our own capacity to use what we have been given by God’s providence,” said Chakwera.
Born in 1860,John Chilembwe was a Western-educated Nyasaland missionary who led an abortive, largely symbolic, uprising against British rule in 1915 and is seen as a forerunner and martyr of Malawi nationalism.
He was one of the first Africans to speak of Nyasaland at a time when the vast majority of his fellow subjects cared only for tribal identification.
Chilembwe died on February 3,1915.
