The Fuko newspaper was launched in December. NPL public relations officer, Timothy Nzima, told journalism.co.za: “Three months down the line, the paper is still doing well, NPL is still producing 15 000 copies every two weeks as initially planned mainly because it has partnered with other organizations.”

Nzima revealed that the paper is funded by NPL and other organizations which have an interest in spreading public interest information.

 “We have partnered with many interested groups including UNFPA, National Civic Education (NICE), Malawi Rural Finance, Total Land Care. These organizations have offices in rural areas and it becomes very easy for us to use their facilities in the distribution of our paper,” explained Nzima

“Fuko newspaper is for the rural masses which constitute 80% of our population but are starved in terms of information in print media. We serve a very small section in urban areas but ignore the masses out there,” Nzima said.

Nzima said Fuko’s focus is on development rather than politics, and publishes in two languages, Chichewa and Tumbuka.

Nice district officer for Lilongwe, Hajira Ali, told journalism.co.za that her office has indeed entered into an agreement with NPL publications as one of the distributing outlets. She said as civic educators they are very happy to take part in the project.

“We have structures from village, zone and constituency levels and we have our volunteers at every level. This is on top of our rural libraries. This is why NPL publications asked us to partner with them in the distribution of Fuko. The paper complements our efforts of civic educating the nation,” said Ali.

 “There is hunger for information in the villages and when a newspaper comes, people scramble for a copy. We used to bring into our libraries two daily papers but these are in English and as a result very few people were able to read them because most people in the villages are illiterate,” she said.

Ali said there are too few copies, and the paper is very thin. She said NPL should add a page where a summary of big stories of that month would be published because many people just hear them on radio but would be very interested to read them.

Fuko is the first newspaper in vernacular published in two vernacular languages distributed across the country.

Boma Lathu, a state-owned vernacular newspaper in Chichewa has been in existence since even before the multiparty era but it has deteriorated over the years.