The debate which took place on Monday, 21st October, 2019, had Martin Manyozo, Mischeck Kanyimbwi and Victoria Liweswe as Polytechnic representatives.

The participants were Bachelor of Business Administration students from the Polytechnic and Bachelors of Social Science students from the CHANCO.

In the opening remarks, the Executive Director of ECAMA Maleka Thula narrated that its mandate is to ensure and encourage open debate and policy dialogue among its members and stakeholders.

“We believe that this debate will provide the youth with a platform to contribute to the policy discourse by identifying and suggesting solutions to various policies, and their views could be taken into consideration by those responsible in policy making,” Thula said.

The debate’s topic was ‘Is Energy Diversification A  Solution To Malawi's Energy Crisis?’ Polytechnic was for the diversification whilst CHANCO was against the motion. 

The debate itself was a fierce contest between the two most gigantic universities in Malawi. CHANCO’s main point was Malawi has not utilized the full potential of hydro-electric power luring the service providers as the ones that are letting Malawi down while Polytechnic’s main point was hydro-electric power has proven to be a failure therefore it is time we look on alternative power sources.

After some deliberations the judges pronounced the Polytechnic as winners and will progress to the next round of the competition.

The Polytechnic ABAS publicity secretary Mathews Mangawa couldn’t hide his delight on the outcome of the debate as he commended their team for the hard work.

“I think the debate was a 50-50 because the CHANCO team also provided brilliant arguments but our team did better in collecting relevant data, and we worked hard on that. I think at the end hard work has paid for us,” said a jubilant Mangawa.

One of the CHANCO students who participated in the debate, a 3rd year Bachelor of Social Science Ian Khonje commended the EU and ECAMA debates saying they have taught them other ways of approaching debates.