Blantyre, Malawi – Joe Kambale has been stitching men’s suits from his living room in Blantyre, Malawi’s commercial hub, for the last eight years. Sometimes he makes about 200,000 kwacha ($173) a week, decent wages in a country where half of the population lives on $1 daily or less, according to data from Malawi’s National Statistical Office.
He was often so swamped with work that he was sometimes unable to take on new customers for up to a month. But in the last two weeks, the 35-year-old tailor’s pair of sewing machines have been idle because demand is dwindling.
