Illovo, which runs the Nchalo estate, a 200 square kilometre sugar cane plantation west of Kanseche, supplies sugar to food giants including Coca-Cola and Nestle

KONDWANI JERE FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES

The Sunday Times | 4 May 2025

by Jack Denton and  Ben Spencer

Sarah Bakali was sinking in floodwater, an infant in her arms and a toddler clinging to her back.

She had fled when water started pouring into her home in Kanseche, Malawi, at about 8pm that night, heading for higher ground after the Mwanza river breached its banks. “But the water just kept on rising,” the 37-year-old said, recalling the night of January 24, 2022, when Cyclone Ana swept across southern Malawi. “Panic set in because I didn’t know how I would escape.”

Through the dark she carried Abigail, three, and Chrispine, one, towards a nearby tree. By then the rushing water was chest-high. She stumbled into a pit where earth had been removed to make bricks and “in a moment Abigail was gone”. Her daughter was among seven villagers who died that night and in the weeks and months that followed. 

The tragedy of Kanseche is now the focus of a legal battle in London involving one of the world’s biggest food companies.

Responsibility for the disaster, according to allegations in court documents lodged with the High Court, lies with Associated British Foods (ABF), a vast conglomerate of food and retail companies including Illovo Sugar, the company that runs the Nchalo sugar plantation on the outskirts of Kanseche village. Illovo supplies sugar to Coca-Cola and Nestlé, among other global brands.

The legal claim, brought against ABF in the names of 1,729 people who lost their homes in Kanseche, blames the disaster on the tall flood defences built around the sugar plantation. Lawyers claim the extensive earthen embankments diverted the waters towards the village, washing it away.

ABF, which has headquarters in the UK and revenue last year of £20.1 billion and owns well-known brands such as Primark and Twinings, denies Illovo’s embankments caused the tragedy.

“This claim seeks wrongly to blame ABF for a once-in-a-lifetime tropical storm that devastated communities across a vast area of southern Africa,” a spokesman said. “The impact on the residents of Kanseche village was catastrophic, as it was for all of those in the many communities affected. However, the sheer scale … meant that serious flooding and damage would have occurred regardless of the presence of embankments at the Nchalo sugar estate.”

The company claimed that 84,000 households were affected in the region and nearly 200,000 across Malawi as a whole.

But in documents lodged with the court, lawyers for the villagers say: “The embankment redirected the natural flow of Mwanza river towards Kanseche village … The presence of the embankment more than doubled the force of the floodwater in Kanseche village.”

The villagers claim they had repeatedly warned Illovo in the years before the flood that the embankments would put Kanseche at risk during a storm. ABF says it has no record of these complaints.

Heavy rain and flooding are common in Kanseche — southern Malawi is in the pathway of cyclones from the Mozambique Channel. The flooding on that night in 2022, however, was extraordinary, the waters rising to a level the villagers had never seen before. About 300mm of rain fell in 24 hours as Cyclone Ana swept through the village.

“I was afraid of how the water was falling that night and knew we could flood,” says Matthews Kanseche, 61, the village headman. “I thought of the dykes.”

When the waters had receded three days later, it was discovered that Lyford Fred, 21, Holace Kheni, 49, and Godfrey Jeke, 76, had died, along with Abigail. One-year-old Chisomo Watson and Elesoni Patrick, 64, died the following month after falling ill that night, and Ethel Sweta, 48, died with associated heart problems the following year.

“Every year we receive rains, but I wasn’t expecting a flood like this,” says Bakali. “I lost everything.”

Paradise lost

Kanseche’s family first settled the village that now bears their name in 1885 and a community blossomed on the fertile south bank of the Mwanza river.

“It was paradise,” says Luke John, a goat trader and leader on Kanseche’s Village Community Protection Committee. “It was a good place to raise a family.”

Before the flood, most inhabitants were subsistence farmers, with enough surplus to sell at market, paying for children’s school fees and buying televisions and small motorcycles.

The first commercial sugar farming began near Kanseche in the 1960s, and Illovo purchased the land in 1997.

Illovo Malawi is the largest sugar producer in the country and its largest private-sector employer. According to a company document from 2016, it made up more than a third of Malawi’s agricultural sector and contributed 10 per cent to the country’s gross domestic product. Sugar is in the top five goods imported to the UK from Malawi, including £150,000-worth in 2023.

The Nchalo estate, which covers 200 square kilometers to the west of Kanseche, is at the heart of this sugar empire.

Water Witness, an Edinburgh-based charity that was already working on safe access to water in southern Malawi, discovered the plight of the Kanseche villagers in the weeks after the flood. In March 2022 it brought the case to the attention of UK law firm Leigh Day, which began gathering evidence for a legal case on a no-win, no-fee basis.

The main dyke separating Kanseche from the plantation stands prominently above the surrounding fields, its sides of earth and patchy grass rising steeply from a ditch on the village side, with a top wide enough for two people to walk abreast.

Lawyers quibble over how high the embankment was before the flood: Leigh Day claims 2m; ABF puts it at an average of 1.5m. The development of these structures is at the centre of the case against the company, which is controlled by the billionaire Weston family. A primarily Canadian and British business dynasty, the Westons are among the wealthiest families in both countries — their fortune is estimated at £14.5 billion — and have close ties to the royal family. The current chief executive of ABF is George Weston, 61.

The villagers claim that before the embankments were built, whenever the Mwanza river flooded, the water would spread across a wide floodplain, including across the sugar plantation. Although some water would have gone through the village, the harm would have been relatively limited. But the dykes changed that, they say, diverting water away from the plantation. Its natural floodplain partly cut off and a “pinchpoint” created, the flood was sent directly through the village at significantly increased height and speed.

Modelling by the British flood consultancy JBA Risk Management, commissioned by Water Witness, concluded: “In our professional judgment we believe that the embankment was a significant contributory factor to the flooding experienced at Kanseche in January 2022.”

The modelling report said the water level increased by as much as 1.3m because of the dyke, bringing the waters to above head height. The modellers concluded that had there been no dyke, buildings in all the 20 Kanseche locations they analysed “would have been safe from structural damage and most locations would have been safe for people”.

ABF disputes the findings, which it claims are based on a “fundamentally flawed” and “self-serving” model. It says the modelling is contradicted by its own professional advice and photographs of the flooding. It also says it focuses too heavily on the Mwanza river, ignoring the impact of the nearby Shire river.

Leigh Day, in its submission to the court, said: “Although the embankment was breached in part during the flooding, the floodwater caused only very minimal damage to the sugar estate.”

ABF disagrees, claiming floodwater surged over its embankments and “severe flooding” occurred to the plantation. “Illovo Malawi estimates that it suffered losses of over 8 billion Malawian Kwacha (equivalent to over £7.4 million) as a result of material damage at the Nchalo estate,” the company said. It said that several staff villages within the sugar estate were affected and 6,000 employees and their family members were displaced.

It added: “We do not seek to make light in any way of the appalling suffering that was and continues to be endured by the residents of Kanseche village or the many other victims of Tropical Storm Ana. But neither Illovo Sugar Malawi nor ABF can be held responsible for unprecedented natural disasters.”

Liz Stephens, professor in climate risks and resilience at the University of Reading, reviewed the case documents for The Sunday Times and said: “Flood defences must be carefully designed to avoid shifting the risk elsewhere. From what I’ve seen there is compelling evidence that the embankment in this case did exactly that.”

Leigh Day is suing the parent company of Illovo, and not the local subsidiary, claiming negligence was at play at the highest levels.

ABF, via a series of corporate entities it owns entirely, has a 76 per cent shareholding in Illovo Malawi. ABF “exercised a high level of control and direction over the operations and management of Illovo Malawi in relation to climate change-related and environmental risks,” according to the claim against the company.

“To be clear, we deny any allegation of negligence either by ABF or Illovo Sugar Malawi,” ABF said. But it added: “The building and maintenance of embankments was and is the responsibility of Illovo Sugar Malawi’s estate agriculture team. Illovo Sugar Malawi operates the estate.”

ABF said it continued to play a full part in helping communities recover, supporting reconstruction and helping provide essential supplies.

Hope in Grace

It took up to three days for the floodwaters to recede after Cyclone Ana swept through. Then the rescue unfolded slowly.

Most of the survivors had sought refuge on roofs and in trees — including 182 people who perched above the waters in a single kachere, or large fig tree, which has symbolic meaning in Malawian village life as a place of meeting. First they had to fight off a large snake that had made the tree its home.

Villagers crossed to higher ground on the north side of the Mwanza, dodging crocodiles that had swum upriver as the waters rose.

The 500 or so households of Kanseche were relocated to a temporary camp, where they spent a year relying on humanitarian aid for survival. Some then left, but many moved on to “New Kanseche”, where prefabricated huts and small earthen structures are crammed together across the Mwanza from their old village.

Aid is now drying up and the villagers are growing desperate. As well as cash compensation, they want to move back to their old lands, and are seeking a legal injunction to remove or change the embankment.

The youngsters that remain in New Kanseche are a painful reminder to Sarah Bakali of her lost daughter, Abigail. “My daughter could have been their age,” she says. “She went to school every day and I hoped she was going to make it out and be successful.” Not even a photograph remains of her child.

Despite the tragedy, this is not a village without hope. Proof of that lies in the story of Linda Ofesi, 21, who was nine months pregnant when the flood hit Kanseche. The shock of the water entering her home sent her into labour.

Her mother and mother-in-law carried her on their shoulders through the rushing water to a tree, where she lay along a branch just above the floodwater, her head against the trunk. There, just before dawn, she gave birth to a baby boy she named Chisomo.

In the Chichewa language, Chisomo means grace. “It’s a miracle that Chisomo is with me now,” Ofesi said. “I believe that God will intervene again to bring us justice.”