Malawi | Sixteen unseen girls

Josephine Chinele 

Late last year, the world was alerted to the disturbing news https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-drones-shahed-africans-11602ab837f0ff4635926d884b422185 that Russia was recruiting hundreds of young African women, aged 18–22, to manufacture drones in a military-industrial compound called Alabuga, 1,000 km east of Moscow. Reports also said that the recruits—from at least 15 African countries—were promised good salaries and skills training, but once there, they were often trapped, facing tax deductions, dangerous working conditions, strict surveillance, and difficulties returning home.

In the past six months, a ZAM team in seven African countries investigated the Russian recruitment exercise—and why so many young Africans take the chance to go, sometimes even after being warned. In this Malawi chapter, Josephine Chinele tries to find her compatriots.

A Malawi flag on a stage where young women are dancing to celebrate their welcome into Alabuga is the only physical sign of participants from my country in all the material emanating from this industrial compound east of Moscow. The photograph shows dancers in traditional chitenje dress, but one cannot tell if they are Malawian, since the chitenje is used widely across Africa.

All other efforts to find Malawians in Alabuga have been fruitless. They must be there: the flag, and Alabuga’s own brochures and website, say so. But no one in Malawi seems to have seen them leave, nor do many seem interested in establishing what happened to them. Even when there is a list of sixteen applicants that was shared with the government as early as two years ago.

Brick wall

At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, over six phone calls have resulted in little more than nothing. “Aren’t you the one who is supposed to call me?” says Jane Ngineriwa, Director of the Europe Directorate at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, after I finally get through and ask why I haven’t received any callback after several messages. The response is then: “Unfortunately, I still cannot help you. We are still waiting to put together information on the issue,” with the promise that a spokesperson will contact us “as soon as information is ready.”

The spokesperson does not.

I am not the only one who hits a brick wall with the government. In the wake of alarming international reports, an NGO called the Human Rights Consultative Committee (HRCC) has asked the government for help tracing Malawi’s recruits at Alabuga. But, “the answer we received from Principal Secretary Mwayiwawo Polepole was a request that we submit details like the names of Alabuga girls or their families. The ‘evidence’ should be provided by us,” says HRCC director Robert Mkwezalamba.

“Reporting it would be suicide to them”

The demand was puzzling because how was the HRCC going to do that? Many Malawians, especially from poor backgrounds—the section of society most likely to flock to the all-expenses-paid opportunity the Russians were offering—would be unlikely to have contacts for the NGO, know of its existence, or find its calls for information on the internet. And then, as Mkwezalamba points out, families whose children have gone to Russia may hesitate to complain, since they would probably be hoping for financial remittances. “They wouldn’t want their daughters, who are breadwinners, to return home. Reporting to us would be suicide to them.”

Also, the request seemed disingenuous. Firstly, because Malawi’s government can simply ask for such details from another government. Secondly, because Malawi’s Department of Foreign Affairs has had a list of 16 Alabuga applicants for the past two years, since August 2023, to be exact.

I find out about this when Malawi’s ambassador to Russia, Joseph Mpinganjira, tells me he gave the Ministry of Foreign Affairs such a list at the time. The reason was that Mpinganjira felt uncomfortable with a Russian request for the speedy processing of 16 passports for young women on the list. He passed it to his superiors at the Ministry to ask for guidance.

Too attractive to be true

Talking to ZAM from Berlin, where the Malawi embassy to Russia is located, Mpinganjira says that already from November 2021, his office had been receiving requests from Russia to promote the recruitment for the project. He had ignored emails about this at first because “the perks on offer were too attractive (to be true).” He had wanted to ‘authenticate’ the nature of the Alabuga project before cooperating.

He had asked his deputy to do background checks on Alabuga, he says, but the person “found nothing.” When Mpinganjira himself sent questions to the Russian Embassy in Berlin, “we got no answer.” Then the embassy “received another email,” he adds, “signed by another person, not the guy who was writing the (previous) emails. In this one,”—he chuckles—“they were asking us if we could support 16 girls to get passports. The names were given to us, and even their phone numbers.”

No feedback came from the meeting with the Russian ambassador

He then passed the list to the Ministry, asking what he was to do, since he hesitated to contact the envisaged recruits themselves “because of privacy issues.” In response, the Ministry “informed me that Principal Secretary Mwayiwawo Polepole had summoned the Russian Ambassador.”

Mpinganjira never received feedback regarding what happened at this meeting or guidance from the Ministry on the matter. But he is, he says, fairly sure that “if there are Malawians in Alabuga, none of them was sent through official means.”

Queries at the Ministry of Labour indeed confirm that there is no formal labour export agreement with Russia, but a spokesperson admits that recruits may have gone there unofficially. “If at all there are Malawians working in Russia, they might have gone there without the knowledge of the ministry,” says spokesperson Nellie Kapatuka.

Labour export

Malawi is a sieve when it comes to such unofficial labour export. There have been quite a few scandals around exploitative labour in Gulf States [https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/news/east-africa/african-labour-unions-press-saudi-arabia-over-workers-abuse-5077716] and elsewhere, facilitated by different agencies. From these scandals, it has repeatedly emerged that there is scant monitoring of these agencies’ operations by the state, and that the government does not record their activities, raising questions about its sincerity regarding the protection of its youth.

The government has recently also become more open about its intentions behind labour export deals, using terms like the country’s “marketability” when referring to its facilitation of workers’ migration, including to places where such migrant workers are then subject to abuse. A current labour export deal between the governments of Malawi and Israel to export Malawian farm workers has been welcomed by Malawi Finance Minister Simplex Banda, who reported in February last year that the “labour export” from his country to Israel had already “generated US$735,000.” [https://www.africa-press.net/malawi/all-news/malawi-gets-735000-us-dollar-from-israel-labour-export-deal].

Migrant workers’ ‘bad’ behaviour makes Malawi “less marketable”

After several of the workers in Israel subsequently complained of abuse and unkept promises—in some instances reportedly abandoning their jobs—Banda’s colleague, then Labour Minister Vitumbiko Mumba, publicly admonished them, saying that they “abandoned posts, engaged in unauthorised vending and were seeking asylum as gays,” and that this was causing Malawi to be “less marketable to the Israeli government” [https://allafrica.com/stories/202502250332.html].

According to an Afrobarometer report from July 2025, “half of Malawian youth are not working and looking for a job, and half have also thought about moving abroad.” This may be one of the factors pushing Malawians to join the Russian war machine. In a comment under a Facebook post that warned about exploitation at Alabuga, a user called Paulinoh Kambiya wrote, “Being exploited in a developed country like that one may be better than being exploited here at home.”

US$1000 per Malawian

President of the Association of Malawian Students in Russia, Nelson Magombo, says in a WhatsApp conversation that he is not aware of any Malawians in Alabuga, but that there may well be, since many “do not follow official procedures to get Russian opportunities.” According to Magombo, there were 59 Malawians in Russia in 2024, the majority students who connected with each other through a WhatsApp community.

“I cannot say anything bad about Russia”

Calling Malawians, either already in Russia, about to go there, or just returned, I find that several have been approached to either join the army or recruit others. Sending me screenshots of a Russian intermediary promising a monthly US$2,500 salary and a US$35,000 payment upon completing the military service contract, John* says he was “promised US$1,000 per Malawian that I bring to the army. But I ignored this… I can’t risk my country’s people to fight a war they know nothing about.” Another confirmed that this was happening but was reluctant to talk further, saying: “I cannot say anything bad about Russia.” He adds that there may well be more students from Africa who join the Russian military once they are in the country. “There are poster adverts pasted all over.”

Phoning the Russians

Phoning the Russian embassy is quite another experience. My first question, about the nature of the Alabuga project, elicits an assertion that it is an “honest, transparent and mutually beneficial cooperation” (and an example of) one of the enduring priorities of Russia’s foreign policy. I am also told that in 2023–2024, 327 people from 44 countries participated in the programme. But my next questions about the number of Malawians in Alabuga and the possible use of African youths in military drone factories are met only with a curt “I do not have any additional information,” by attache Anna Verkhovtseva.

“Please retract such comments”

When I explain that this issue is in the public interest, that the public needs to know what is happening to their daughters in Alabuga, and ask whether she can help facilitate contact with any of the participants there, Verkhovtseva’s answer is: “We cannot share this information when it concerns the privacy of other citizens.”

When I still press further, saying that we are not about to reveal identities; we just need to know if, and if so, how many Malawians are there and whether they are safe, she doesn’t budge, repeating that she cannot give information. When I finally put to Verkhovtseva that we will have to flag to our audience how unhelpful the embassy is being, the last answer I receive is: “Please retract such comments.”

*Name changed

See the first instalments in this Transnational Investigation here

Migrant Battalion | African governments collude with the Russian recruitment of young women into its arms industry

Zambia | First contact

Cameroon | Looking for Oceanne

Great Lakes | Caught in the snow 

Uganda | Trafficking station