Malawi failed to shine at the inaugural Africa Spelling Bee competition held in South Africa last Saturday.
The country’s Spelling Master Bee Coordinator, Lewis Mbaula, confirmed yesterday that the country did not do well and that Zameer Dada from South Africa was the winner.
He said it was a hotly contested competition that brought on stage 27 contestants from nine countries.
The contestants battled it out, spelling out words used in the English language for the grand prize of a full undergraduate scholarship sponsored by Monash South Africa.
But at the end of it all, it was Dada, who outsmarted the other 26 contestants.
“The vocabulary exhibition had three spellers each from nine different spelling bee contests from Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe making it one of the biggest African educational unions for children under the age of 16,” said Mbaula.
Nine- year old Pasha Kamenya and 14-year olds Vanessa Sherry and Jacqueline Malombe represented the country having come out top in the junior and senior contests on the local front.
“We are excited that Malawi participated at the event and they tried their level best unfortunately it was a South African contestant who triumphed,” said Mbaula.
He said the contestants from Malawi put up a gallant fight and that they learned a lot despite not coming out victors.
He said apart from participating in the competition, the contestants also had time to visit historical places including the Mandela House and Hector Peterson in Soweto.
“Before the competition, all the spelling bee contestants went through an orientation process and mentoring. As National Spelling Bee Master we also learnt a lot to improve our local contest,” he said.
Mbaula said next up the Africa Spelling Bee competition will be held in Ethiopia.
“As Malawi we also intend to participate in the second edition. All we have to do is to encourage more students to participate so that we have the best,” he said.
For triumphing in the local contest, Sherry and Malombe pocketed K1 million each courtesy of Sunbird Hotels while Kamenya received K1 million from A1 Biscuits a subsidiary of Rab Group of Companies.
Meanwhile, Mbaula has said the National Spelling Bee’s registration for season five will start on August 15, 2016.
The African Spelling Bee is a consortium of 10 spelling bee organisations sharing the passion of enhancing the reading culture, building confidence, improving public speaking, building vocabulary and unearthing different abilities in children across Africa.
This year saw South African Airways partnering the contest as the official airliner.
Mobile company Vodacom also was part of the competition sponsoring tablets to all the spellers that participated.
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