Duty, diligence and disasters: detailing everyday practices of Malawian civil servants in the climate crisis

African civil servants are often portrayed as lacking capacity, deeply entangled in patronage networks, embroiled in all kinds of corruption and largely indifferent to their jobs and the plight of their fellow citizens. Perceptions of Malawian civil servants have been no exception to this stereotype and find fertile ground in numerous recent governance scandals, including the misuse of COVID-19 funds. In this paper, I suggest that this overarching focus on failure has obscured and trivialised important dimensions of civil servants’ work that are central to how they perform their duties. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork with civil servants working with the Department of Disaster Management Affairs in relief interventions after Cyclone Idai (2019) and Cyclone Freddy (2023), I detail the ways in which they understood their professional responsibilities and their efforts to balance different (moral) obligations they experienced in relation to their job. Taking seriously my interlocutors’ suggestion that one needs ‘a special heart’ in their line of work, I argue that they draw on a sense of duty to fulfil their duties. This becomes more visible during times of emergency response and disasters but is always present. I ultimately suggest that shifting the focus from failure to civil servants’ sense of duty allows for a more nuanced understanding of the Malawi state.