CHINKOTA, Malawi: The bleak, levelled terraces of gravelly sand near Lilongwe are the only evidence of Madonna’s $15 million (R103m) academy, which has been ditched in a cloud over misused funds and disgruntled locals.
The abandoned site looks more like a quarried mine than a multimillion-dollar dream academy where Malawi’s daughters can be groomed into leaders and doctors.
A year after Madonna laid a foundation stone engraved “dare to dream” in April 2010, the school had been called off.
“This has just become a football ground now,” said local chief Binson Kalenga.
Madonna is being sued by employees who were fired, her charity is tied up in a US tax investigation, and Malawi is investigating how the land was paid for.
“Initially although I welcomed it, personally I was very sceptical about the whole thing,” said Lilongwe district commissioner Paul Kalilombe.
Madonna’s charities did not reply to queries. In January, she said the academy project was off in favour of helping existing schools across the country. But The New York Times then reported on an audit, ordered by Madonna, that found $3.8m squandered on the discarded project.
The audit reportedly found a “startling lack of accountability” from the project’s management team.
The star’s last word was in April, when she said a new strategy would be announced in coming weeks.
Unhappiness began with payments to villagers for the land, which Madonna’s charity Raising Malawi paid through the government. It seems that officials inserted false recipients into the list of landowners to be paid out.
While the matter is apparently being investigated by the fiscal police in Malawi, villagers in Chinkhota have yet to receive an explanation.
The biggest landowner around the school’s site, Tsiyent Foroyati, 52, was paid 39 000 kwacha (R1 800) in compensation, but had wanted 3 million kwacha. The family now pay 5 000 kwacha to rent 1 acre for farming.
Madonna should have worked with an existing organisation that knows “what is actually happening on the ground”, said Kalilombe who believes an orphanage is planned for the academy site. “When a person of such stature comes in, most people only think of the money,” he said. “The idea was good. She had good intentions.”
– Sapa-AFP