Nairobi:  What's the point in Malawi's new flag? Some countries in Africa have changed their national flags at different times for different reasons, some of which make sense, while some don't. For instance, Mozambique changed its flag after a particularly violent civil war pitting the armed forces of the Frelimo-led government and the Renamo insurgency.

The change in flag design accompanied the change in the very name of the country, from the People's Republic of Mozambique to, simply, the Republic of Mozambique. I suppose this was to signify the transformation of the young nation from the avowed Marxist state that Samora Machel and his camaradas founded in 1965 to an "ordinary" and harmless republic, friendly to all ideologies, especially of the other kind.

Rwanda changed its flag in the aftermath of the genocide in 1994, notably doing away with the very prominent letter R that used to sit in the middle of the flag, and significantly changing the colour schemes. This came along with a new national anthem, marking a clean break with the exclusionist regimes of Gregoire Kayibanda and Juvenal Habyarimana and herald ing a new beginning for all Rwandans after that spine-chilling slaughter.

South Africa, naturally, had to change its flag when, in 1994, it tore down the apartheid regime and in its place established a democratic, non-racial state. To depict the new order, but in deference to the spirit of reconciliation in the air at the time, a fusion was contrived between the green-gold-black colours of the African National Congress and the white-red-blue of the erstwhile Afrikaner flag.

The national anthem was crafted out of the ANC's Nkosi Sikeleli Afrika and the Die Stem, which still play one after the other.

Congo has also had a change of colours, throwing away the green-yellow-and-red of Zaire and adopting a blue background setting off yellow stars, harking back to the turbulent early days of Independence and the martyrdom of Patrice Lumumba. So when I learnt that Malawi also had changed its national flag, essentially replacing its rising sun with a full, round sun, I tried to figure out what that was in aid of.

The rising sun represents dawn, a beginning, aspiration, a resolve to embark on a quest, a freshness of purpose, all that is new, vibrant and upbeat. I suspect that's what founder president Kamuzu Banda had in mind when he coined the Independence campaign slogan, Kwaaacha!, meaning it's dawn, which is now also the name of the country's currency.

The current President Bingu wa Mutharika has done much to commend him in the six years or so that he's been in power, including transforming his country from a basket-case to a breadbasket -- feeding neighbouring countries and stockpiling grain reserves -- through an inputs subsidy scheme that actually works.

That he could snatch this achievement from the jaws of a hostile parliament was no mean feat. In appreciation, the Malawian electorate, of course with a little encouragement, returned him with a whopping parliamentary majority last year, panicking the churlish opposition no end. Better still, in his inaugural speech last year he promised to transform the valleys and wetlands of Malawi into agricultural production centres with a view to enabling the country to harvest three crops annually.

Yet this cannot spell the end of the dawn and the ascendancy of the noon sun. Malawi is still a young, underdeveloped country, in need of fresh starts in many fresh areas. If the message intended by the flag change is that Malawi has taken off, someone may be engaged in self-delusion.

That state of affairs will not be helped by the apparent attempt by Bingu to anoint his professor brother Peter as successor when he retires in four years' time. Unless, of course, the professor's mission will be to change the flag once again, this time to depict the setting sun?

*  Jenerali Ulimwengu, chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper, is a political commentator and civil society activist based in Dar es Salaam.