‘…I no longer trust women’ – Swed
That child you call yours might not be yours after all. DNA paternity tests in Malawi show about 80 percent of men are not biological fathers of ‘their’ children, figures that arguably paint Malawi as a cheating haven.
Genetics scientist Kingdom Kwapata told local newspaper The Nation that data from DNA paternity tests reveals a staggering reality that could leave men across Malawi quivering, with some potentially raising children who are not biologically theirs without knowing it.
Kwapata told the paper that he handles more than 30 paternity cases a month, nearly 400 annually, with negative results consistently hovering around 80 percent.
“About 80 percent of paternity cases linked to suspected infidelity are initiated by men, and in roughly 80 percent of those cases, the men are proven right,” he was quoted as saying by The Nation.
Attestation Background Checks and DNA Limited Malawi, which operates clinics in Blantyre and Lilongwe, has reported a similar 80 percent non-paternity rate among clients seeking DNA tests.
Ibrahim Swed, a Lilongwe-based businessperson, is among men who sought testing to settle long-standing doubts. He underwent DNA tests in 2022, with some negative results confirming his suspicions.
“I have very little trust in women now,” Swed told The Nation. “For all the children I was told were mine, I had to undergo DNA testing to confirm.”
The trend is increasingly spilling into divorce, child maintenance and inheritance disputes as more men turn to DNA testing following suspicions of infidelity.
The figures, however, relate to men undergoing paternity testing, particularly those already suspicious of infidelity, and do not mean that 80 percent of all fathers in Malawi are raising children who are not biologically theirs.
The picture is dramatically different in maintenance disputes. “In court-referred cases where men are simply trying to evade maintenance, around 90 percent are actually proven to be the biological fathers,” Kwapata said.
Public Affairs Committee (PAC) spokesperson Bishop Gilford Matonga described the statistics as a “worrying symptom of moral decay and marital infidelity”.
