In Malawi, a context where many students do not learn to read, we wanted a way to distinguish those who might struggle with reading acquisition regardless of instruction. Specifically, we wanted to know if students with deficits in both rapid automatic naming (RAN) and phonological awareness in Chichewa experience more difficulty with reading growth than students with single or no deficits. Prior to our study, the double deficit had been shown in opaque and transparent orthographies but had yet to be explored in Chichewa or other Bantu languages.