By Patricia Kapulula
Lilongwe, October 12, Mana: The Malawi National Examinations Board (MANEB) has from Wednesday 12 October 2022 abolished the manual candidate enrollment and payment and replaced it with the electronic registration (e-Registration and Payment).
Deputy Minister of Education, Monica Chang’anamuno launched the new system in Lilongwe on Wednesday and has described it as a milestone in the history of Malawi.
The current system allows candidates to register online and pay the fees directly to MANEB through TNM Mpamba, Airtel Money, National Bank Mo626, NBS Easy Mobile, FDH525, Standard Bank and First Capital Bank.
“A major advantage of the system I have observed is transparency. The invoice which is generated shows the amount of fees a candidate is required to pay. This limits the opportunity for criminally inflating the costs and stealing money from unsuspecting parents, guardians or candidates,” she said.
Chang’anamuno said what MANEB has introduced is a remarkable change whose achievement of its objectives depends on all Malawians to embrace the change.
She, therefore, underscored her ministry’s commitment to supporting the education sectors’ endeavours to digitise its operations in order to achieve excellence and effectiveness in service delivery.
MANEB Executive Director Prof. Dorothy Nampota said the examination body experienced a number of gaps in registration and payment of examination fees.
She said one of the gaps were errors because registration was done manually first at school level and transferred into a computer at district level then to MANEB which attracted other errors along the way.
“There were too many errors in the database and also we could have photo mismatch because they (photos) were given manually and sometimes they could get lost.
“We are also addressing the issue of examination fees. We had some school administrators who could embezzle funds and that caused problems to us,” said Nampota.
Ministry of Education has since made strides to providing gadgets even to the zonal level in the rural areas for management of the system.
The system, which started in 2021 as a pilot phase, is applicable to Primary School Leaving Certificate (PSLC), Junior Certificate of Education (JC) and Malawi School Certificate of Education (MSCE) examinations.
The electronic registration and payment system by MANEB is done in conjunction with Ministry of Education through the Equity with Quality Learning at Secondary (EQUALS) Project with support from the World Bank.
