Two sisters from northern Malawi took different roads through Sweden, China, Europe and the United States — and emerged among the world’s elite footballers.
Before there were Golden Boots, Ballon d’Or nominations, Champions League nights or NWSL records, there were two girls in Rumphi.
Tabitha and Temwa Chaŵinga grew up in northern Malawi playing football in an environment where girls were far more likely to be directed towards other pursuits than encouraged toward professional football.
Tabitha remembers beginning at around six or seven years old and playing mostly with boys. Her parents initially opposed her ambition, believing that education offered a more realistic route to a successful future. She persisted.
That persistence would eventually create a pathway that neither sister could have seen when they were children.
Today, the Chaŵinga sisters have played professional football across Malawi, Sweden, China, Italy, France and the United States.
One became the pioneer.
The other followed — and then began breaking records of her own.
Tabitha: the first through the door
Tabitha’s career is the foundation of the story.
Her talent was recognised in Malawi at DD Sunshine, the Lilongwe club whose late owner David Dube became an important figure in her early career.
In 2014, she was offered a trial with Swedish third-tier club Krokom/Dvärsätts IF.
The move was anything but guaranteed.
Tabitha later recalled that the Swedish club was initially uncertain whether a player from Malawi would be good enough. Dube paid for her flight himself and effectively told the club that if she failed the trial, they could send her home without bearing the travel cost.
She passed.
In doing so, Tabitha became the first Malawian woman to play professional football in Europe.
Then she started scoring.
And she did not stop.
After Krokom, Tabitha joined Kvarnsvedens IK. Her 43-goal season helped the club gain promotion to Sweden’s top division. From Sweden she moved to China, first with Jiangsu Suning and later Wuhan Jianghan University, establishing herself among the most dangerous forwards in the Chinese game.
But China would also become the place where the family story gained another protagonist.
Temwa follows
Tabitha did not simply create an international career for herself.
She repeatedly helped open doors for her younger sister.
FIFA documented how Tabitha encouraged DD Sunshine to take Temwa seriously in Malawi. Later, when Tabitha was leaving Kvarnsvedens, she recommended Temwa to the Swedish club.
Temwa followed her sister to Sweden.
Then to China.
But the story did not remain one of a younger sibling simply walking behind an older one.
In China, Temwa became a star in her own right.
The symbolic turning point arrived in 2020.
Wuhan Jianghan University faced Tabitha’s Jiangsu Suning in the Chinese Women’s Super League title decider.
Temwa scored.
Wuhan won the championship.
The younger sister had followed the pathway her elder sister helped create — and then defeated her at the end of it.
From there, their careers increasingly diverged.
Tabitha’s route led back to Europe.
Temwa’s would eventually lead to the United States.
Tabitha conquers Europe
Tabitha joined Inter Milan for the 2022–23 season.
She scored 23 league goals, finishing as the leading scorer in Serie A Femminile and becoming the first African woman to win the Italian top-flight scoring title.
Paris Saint-Germain came next.
At PSG, she emerged as one of the outstanding attacking players in French football, competing in the UEFA Women’s Champions League and adding another elite European environment to a career already spanning multiple continents.
Her journey had now moved from a Swedish third-division trial to some of the most prestigious stages in women’s football.
She subsequently joined Lyon, placing her within one of the most successful institutions in the history of the women’s club game.
The importance of that progression is easy to miss when viewed backwards.
There was no established Malawian pipeline into European women’s football waiting for Tabitha when she began.
She became the pipeline.
Temwa transforms the NWSL
Temwa’s move to Kansas City Current in 2024 produced one of the most extraordinary debut seasons in NWSL history.
She scored 20 regular-season goals, winning the league’s Golden Boot.
Then she won Most Valuable Player.
In 2025, she did it again.
Fifteen league goals.
Another Golden Boot.
Another MVP.
Kansas City Current confirms that Temwa became the first player in NWSL history to win MVP in consecutive seasons, while her two Golden Boots made her only the second player in league history to win the scoring award multiple times.
By then, the sisters were no longer simply extraordinary Malawian footballers.
They were two players operating among the elite of the global women’s game.
The difficult parts of the road
Their rise should not be romanticised into a simple story of perseverance.
There were barriers that should never have existed.
Tabitha has spoken publicly about being subjected to humiliating gender scrutiny as a teenager. At 13, while playing school football, she was forced to undress because opponents disputed that she was female. She later described another similar incident while playing for DD Sunshine.
The first episode caused her to leave football for a year.
Years later, after becoming an international star, she spoke publicly about the experience and called for stronger safeguards for women and girls in the sport.
The story of the Chaŵingas is therefore not compelling because two women simply “worked hard.”
It is compelling because they became world-class while moving through environments that often lacked the infrastructure, investment and protections that such talent deserved.
And then the story came home
For years there was a contradiction at the centre of the Chaŵinga story.
Two of Malawi’s greatest athletes were succeeding around the world while their national team remained outside women’s football’s biggest tournaments.
The sisters could win club championships.
They could win individual awards.
They could score across multiple continents.
But Malawi had never qualified for WAFCON.
Malawi had never reached a senior FIFA World Cup.
That changed in 2026.
The Scorchers reached WAFCON for the first time.
Against Nigeria in their opening match, Temwa scored twice and Tabitha once as Malawi stunned the defending champions 3–2.
Against Egypt, Temwa scored again.
Against Zambia, Tabitha scored.
Against Ghana in the quarter-final, Temwa equalised before Rose Kabzere scored the goal that sent Malawi to the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup.
Then, in the semi-final against Algeria, the sisters scored all three Malawi goals: Tabitha twice and Temwa once.
Through five matches, the sisters had scored nine of Malawi’s 12 tournament goals.
But perhaps the most important development was that the tournament was no longer only about them.
Faith Chinzimu had scored the goals that qualified Malawi for WAFCON.
Rose Kabzere scored the goal that qualified Malawi for the World Cup.
Mercy Sikelo repeatedly protected Malawi at the other end.
A national team was growing around the pathway the sisters had helped make visible.
More than two careers
That may ultimately be the greatest meaning of the Chaŵinga story.
Tabitha went first.
She created possibility for Temwa.
Temwa followed.
Then she became extraordinary on her own terms.
Together, the sisters changed what a Malawian girl could point to when somebody asked whether football could really take her anywhere.
Their careers have already stretched from the dusty pitches of Rumphi to Sweden, China, Milan, Paris, Lyon and Kansas City.
Now the journey has reached somewhere neither sister had been able to reach before.
A FIFA World Cup.
In 2027, Malawi will walk onto the global stage in Brazil.
For the first time, Tabitha and Temwa will not need to watch the World Cup imagining what it might have been like to be there.
They will be there.
Together.
Wearing Malawi.
From Rumphi to the world.
