It's a night that will be remembered for a long time. On Tuesday evening in Rabat, Malawi pulled off one of the greatest upsets in the history of the Women's Africa Cup of Nations by defeating Nigeria, 10-time winners of the competition, by a score of 3-2.
The victory is entirely down to one duo: the Chawinga sisters. Temwa, striker for Kansas City Current, scored twice. Her older sister Tabitha, team captain and player for OL Lyonnes, added the second goal. Together, they scored all of Malawi’s goals in what will go down as one of the biggest shocks since the tournament began 28 years ago.
For their very first appearance at the Women's Africa Cup of Nations, Malawi faced the toughest possible opponent on paper. Nigeria is ranked 36th in the world, while Malawi sits at 153rd - a gap of 117 places between the two nations.
The Super Falcons had played in all thirteen editions of the tournament and won 10, including the last one, against the host nation, Morocco. They had only lost three group stage matches in 37 attempts. Malawi, meanwhile, were discovering the competition for the first time.
The match scenario long suggested a heroic resistance rather than an upset. At Al Medina Stadium in Rabat, the two teams cancelled each other out for over an hour. Then everything changed.
In the 73rd minute, Temwa, 27, beat Nigerian goalkeeper Chiamaka Nnadozie - considered the best on the continent -before scoring from a tight angle. Six minutes later, her sister Tabitha won a one-on-one with Nnadozie and slotted the ball home to make it 2-0.
Nigeria, the defending champions and heavy favourites for this edition, then responded. In a seemingly endless period of stoppage time, Nigerian captain Rasheedat Ajibade pulled one back in the 92nd minute from the penalty spot after a handball in the box.
But the celebrations were short-lived: moments later, Temwa again found herself one-on-one with Nnadozie and lobbed the keeper, who had come out too early, to make it 3-1.
Nigeria did manage to score again, with Malawian goalkeeper Mercy Sikelo only able to parry a shot from Uchenna Kanu that crossed the line, but the Ugandan referee blew the final whistle almost immediately after the restart, leaving Nigeria no time to chase an equaliser.
Thanks to this win, Malawi temporarily sit second in Group C, level on points with Zambia, but behind on goal difference. The other Southern African nation also made a statement the same day: with four goals from Barbra Banda, Zambia crushed Egypt 6-0 at another stadium in Rabat.
Malawi and Zambia will face Egypt and Nigeria respectively on Saturday, with a chance to secure a spot in the quarter-finals with a win.
Sisters carrying an entire national team
Malawi’s victory was no accident. Of all the officially recorded goals in the history of the Malawi women’s national team, founded in 2002, the Chawinga sisters have scored about a third - between 32 and 35% according to reports.
Since 2002, the team has scored 152 goals in all official competitions (COSAFA Cup, AFCON qualifiers, Olympic qualifiers). One statistic sums up their dominance: at the 2020 COSAFA Cup, Malawi scored 12 goals in the tournament - and every single one was scored by the Temwa-Tabitha duo.
Before facing Nigeria, Temwa had warned that her nation was not coming to Rabat just to watch. "Beating the defending champions would mean a lot to us," she told ESPN.
"This is our first match, so it would boost our morale and give us confidence for what’s next. Because if we start well, by beating a team like Nigeria in the first game, the whole group will start to believe."
Knowing that all eyes were on her and her sister, she also made sure to remind everyone that Malawi is more than just the Chawinga duo: "They know us, Tabitha and me. But they don’t know our other players, or our style of play. If they focus on us, we have other players who can get the job done."
She also hinted at a bigger ambition: qualifying for the 2027 World Cup, reserved for the four AFCON semi-finalists: "We know we’re underdogs, but everyone knows you have to work hard for everything. If we qualify for this tournament, we can go to the World Cup. We’re not here just to take part. We’re here to compete."
For her part, Tabitha approached this debut with undisguised excitement: "It was my dream to play in the Africa Cup of Nations. The moment has come. We know how strong Nigeria are; it’s a great nation, but we have to focus on ourselves. Our players must compete without any inferiority complex."
Family story forged through adversity
Born a few years apart in the rural district of Rumphi, in northern Malawi - Tabitha on May 22nd, 1996, Temwa on September 20th, 1998 - the two sisters are part of a family of five children and belong to the Tumbuka ethnic group.
Nothing initially pointed them toward a professional career. Tabitha started kicking a ball at age five, playing with the village boys, before joining the DD Sunshine club in Lilongwe, the capital, at 13. She was even once forced to undress, as opponents refused to believe a girl could play so well.
Their parents, however, saw things very differently. In an interview with The Guardian in October 2023, Tabitha recalled: "My parents didn’t support the idea of me playing football. They wanted me to focus only on school."
She was the one who got her younger sister Temwa into football. "Every time I came home, I had to face my parents’ strict rules," she recalled. "They would whip me very harshly. Of course, I didn’t give up. I told my parents that the day they stopped beating me would be the day I stopped playing football."
Temwa confirmed this family opposition to SHE Scores Bangers in July 2024: "My mother told us not to play, that football wasn’t for girls." As a teenager, her days were spent "going to school, going to work, washing dishes," leaving little time for sports.
"My mother stopped Tabitha from playing, but she kept going, and I followed her. When she went out to play, I went with her. My mother eventually had to accept it," Temwa explained.
With no girls’ teams nearby, the two sisters would travel over 400 kilometres from Rumphi to Lilongwe to join a girls’ team, as the capital was also where national selectors came to watch.
"They thought it was impossible for one family to have two such good players," Tabitha recalled with a laugh. "We were so scared to play in front of the people who made up the national team. That’s when we started to believe in ourselves." The two sisters received their very first national team call-up together, in 2011.
Two European journeys, then a reunion
Tabitha paved the way. At 18, in 2014, she joined Swedish third-division club Krokom/Duvereds IF, where she exploded onto the scene with 39 goals in 18 matches, becoming the first Malawian female footballer to play for a European club.
She continued with Kvarnsvedens IK, whom she led to promotion to the Damallsvenskan, Sweden’s top division, thanks to 43 goals in 24 matches, before moving to China’s Jiangsu Suning in 2018 for a then-record transfer in Swedish women’s football. Named player of the year in her first season in China with 31 goals in all competitions, she retained the award the following season and helped Jiangsu achieve a historic quadruple.
Temwa followed in her sister’s footsteps, heading to Sweden and Kvarnsvedens IK in 2017, just after Tabitha had left. In January 2020, she also moved to China, joining Wuhan Jianghan on a two-year contract, while Tabitha was playing for rivals Jiangsu, the reigning champions. The two sisters were thus opponents in the league at first.
Temwa’s schedule was disrupted by the lockdown imposed in Wuhan at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Once the league resumed, she scored nine goals in her first season, second only to Zambian Barbra Banda, and helped Wuhan win the title.
In 2021, Tabitha also joined Wuhan after Jiangsu Suning’s sponsor stopped funding the women’s team: the sisters then became teammates. That season, Temwa scored seven goals while Tabitha finished as the league’s top scorer with nine, as Wuhan retained their title.
However, in 2022, Tabitha moved to Italy on loan to Inter Milan, where she became the first African top scorer in Serie A with 23 goals. Temwa then took over as Wuhan’s main striker, finishing as the league’s top scorer with 10 goals and helping the club win a third straight title. In 2023, she truly exploded: 51 goals in all competitions for Wuhan, 12 for Malawi, making her the world’s top scorer of the year, male or female, and leading her club to a fourth consecutive title.
Meanwhile, Tabitha continued her European adventure: after Inter, she was loaned to Paris Saint-Germain, where she became the first Malawian to play and score in the women’s Champions League, before signing permanently with OL Lyonnes without returning to China.
Temwa, for her part, moved to the United States in 2024, signing with Kansas City Current. She immediately became the first Malawian to score in NWSL history, then broke the record for most goals in a regular season (20 goals, surpassing the previous record held by Sam Kerr) and won both the top scorer and league MVP awards.
She repeated the feat in 2025, winning the Golden Boot again and becoming only the second player in NWSL history, after Kerr, to achieve back-to-back doubles, and was named MVP for the second year in a row - a first in league history. She also helped her club win the regular season title (NWSL Shield) that year.
Pioneers for Malawian football
In 2024, Tabitha and Temwa were the only two Malawian players, male or female, playing professionally outside Africa. They fully embrace their status as pioneers.
"I hope that when clubs see me perform, they think: she’s from Malawi, maybe we should look at players from there, and we’ll start to see more names going to Europe," Temwa told SHE Scores Bangers. That wish has partly come true: other Malawian players have since joined European clubs and signed professional contracts, such as Rose Kadzere at Montpellier or Faith Chinzimu at BK Hacken.
There is still one honour that has eluded Tabitha: the CAF African Player of the Year award, despite her exceptional consistency over the past eight years and top scorer titles in every league she’s played in. "I don’t know why I’ve never won it," she told The Guardian.
"Maybe it’s because I’m from Malawi, and because our national team has never played in the big competitions. But I think I deserve it." By beating 10-time champions and reigning holders Nigeria in Malawi’s first-ever AFCON match, her national team has just given her a strong case.