Malawi

• 1. Introduction

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  Malawi, officially the Republic of Malawi, is a landlocked country in Southeast Africa, and its name means flames in Chichewa and Chitumbuka. As of July 2025, it is home to 22,224,282 people. Its capital and largest city is Lilongwe. Few outsiders know much about this place. This documentary asks who lived here first, who gave the country its name, and how a nation of mostly rural farming families made its way through colonial rule, a long dictatorship and a run of tense elections.

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• 2. Lake and Rift

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  Lake Malawi is called the Calendar Lake because it stretches about 365 miles in length and 52 miles in width. It is also known as Lake Nyasa. The lake lies east of the Great Rift Valley, which runs through the country from north to south. It forms over three-quarters of Malawi's eastern boundary. The Shire River leaves its southern end and joins the Zambezi 250 miles farther south, in Mozambique.

  The country covers more than 118,000 square kilometres. Zambia lies to the northwest, Tanzania to the northeast, and Mozambique to the south, southwest and east. Around the Rift Valley, plateaus generally rise 3,000 to 4,000 feet above sea level, and some in the north reach 8,000 feet. South of the lake lie the Shire Highlands, gently rolling land at about 3,000 feet. There, the peaks of Zomba and Mulanje climb to 7,000 and 10,000 feet.

  Altitude softens what would otherwise be an equatorial climate. The low-lying south is hot, while the northern highlands are temperate. Between November and April, warm equatorial rain and thunderstorms arrive, and the storms peak in late March. From May to September, wet mists drift from the highlands onto the plateaus, and almost no rain falls.

  Elephants, hippos, antelopes, buffaloes and big cats are among the animals native to Malawi, alongside a great variety of birds. Lake Malawi has been described as having one of the richest lake fish faunas in the world. Seven terrestrial ecoregions lie within the borders, among them miombo woodlands and flooded grasslands. Protection comes through five national parks, four wildlife and game reserves and two other protected areas.

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• 3. Kingdoms and Missionaries

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  Before Bantu peoples arrived from the north around the 10th century, the land held a small population of hunter-gatherers. Present-day oral tradition calls them Akafula, BaTwa, Akaombe or Mwandionerakuti. The farming Bantu gradually overtook the BaTwa. Most Bantu continued south, but some stayed and founded ethnic groups based on shared ancestry.

  By the 16th century, several kingdoms had formed, including the Maravi Empire and the Nkhamanga. The Maravi realm reached from north of Nkhotakota to the Zambezi River, and from Lake Malawi to the Luangwa River in what is now Zambia. The Maravi were a Bantu group who emigrated from southern Congo around 1400 AD, and they gave the country its name. In the 17th century, with the area mostly united under one native ruler, people began trading and making alliances with Portuguese traders and soldiers. By the 18th century, the empire had broken into lands controlled by many separate ethnic groups.

  In the mid-19th century, the Indian Ocean slave trade reached its height. About 20,000 people a year were believed to be enslaved at Nkhotakota and taken to Kilwa, where they were sold.

  The missionary and explorer David Livingstone reached Lake Malawi, then called Lake Nyasa, in 1859. He identified the Shire Highlands south of the lake as suitable for European settlement. Anglican and Presbyterian missions followed in the 1860s and 1870s. A small mission and trading settlement was founded at Blantyre in 1876, and the African Lakes Company Limited was established in 1878. A British consul took up residence at Blantyre in 1883.

  Portugal wanted the territory too, and its 1885 Pink Map claimed the land between Angola and Mozambique. Britain sent Harry Johnston as consul, with instructions to sign treaties with local rulers beyond Portuguese jurisdiction. The British Ultimatum of 1890 went against the Portuguese claim. A British protectorate was proclaimed over the Shire Highlands in 1889. In 1891 it grew to cover all of present-day Malawi as the British Central Africa Protectorate, and in 1907 it was renamed Nyasaland.

  Colonial government was thin. In 1891, administrators received a budget of 10,000 pounds a year. That paid for ten European civilians, two military officers, 70 Punjabi Sikhs and 85 Zanzibar porters. This small staff was expected to govern and police around 94,000 square kilometres holding between one and two million people. Historians sometimes call such arrangements the Thin White Line. Slavery was completely ended that same year.

  In 1944, the Nyasaland African Congress was formed to press local interests on the British government. In 1953, Britain linked Nyasaland with Northern and Southern Rhodesia in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, mainly for political reasons. African nationalists opposed the federation, and support for the Congress grew. Hastings Banda, a European-trained doctor working in Ghana, was persuaded to return in 1958. He was elected president of the Congress, and colonial authorities jailed him in 1959. After his release in 1960, he was asked to help draft a new constitution, including a clause giving Africans a majority in the colony's Legislative Council.

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• 4. Banda's Rule

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  In 1961, Banda's Malawi Congress Party won a majority in the Legislative Council elections. Banda became Prime Minister in 1963, the same year the federation was dissolved. On the 6th of July 1964, Nyasaland became independent and took the name Malawi, a name Banda himself chose. The date is still commemorated as Independence Day, a public holiday.

  Under a new constitution, Malawi became a republic in 1966, with Banda as its first president. The government formally made the country a one-party state, with the Malawi Congress Party as the only legal party. Malawi kept its membership in the Commonwealth of Nations. In 1971, Banda was declared president for life.

  For almost 30 years, Banda presided over a rigidly totalitarian regime, which ensured that Malawi did not suffer armed conflict. Opposition parties grew up abroad instead, among them the Malawi Freedom Movement of Orton Chirwa and the Socialist League of Malawi, both founded in exile.

  The economy of the period was often held up as an example. A poor, landlocked, heavily populated country with few mineral resources had still managed progress in both agriculture and industrial development.

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• 5. Ballots and Crises

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  Under pressure for greater political freedom, Banda agreed to a referendum in 1993, and voters chose a multi-party system. Late that year, a presidential council was formed and the life presidency was abolished. A new constitution effectively ended the rule of the Malawi Congress Party.

  In 1994, the first multi-party elections were held, and Banda was defeated by Bakili Muluzi. Muluzi was a former secretary general of the party and a former minister in Banda's cabinet. Re-elected in 1999, he remained president until Bingu wa Mutharika won the 2004 election. Mutharika was re-elected in 2009, despite allegations of electoral fraud from the opposition and observers.

  In July 2011, protests erupted over the high cost of living, poor governance and a lack of foreign exchange reserves. Some critics saw Mutharika as increasingly autocratic and dismissive of human rights. The protests left 18 people dead and at least 44 others with gunshot wounds. That month, the United Kingdom suspended all budgetary aid, and the United States froze a 350 million dollar grant. Both cited the government's treatment of critics, and the United States added restrictions on the press and police violence. The trouble had started when a document in which the British ambassador criticised Mutharika became public, and the president expelled the ambassador.

  In April 2012, Mutharika died of a heart attack, and his death was kept secret for 48 hours. An elaborate flight carried his body to South Africa, where ambulance drivers refused to move it because they were not licensed to transport a corpse. The South African government threatened to reveal the news, and Vice-President Joyce Banda, no relation to Hastings Banda, took over the presidency.

  In the 2014 election, Joyce Banda came in third. She was replaced by Peter Mutharika, the brother of the late president. He was narrowly re-elected in 2019, but in February 2020 the Constitutional Court overturned the result because of irregularities and widespread fraud. The Supreme Court upheld that ruling in May 2020 and ordered a new election. It was the first time an election in the country had been legally challenged. Opposition leader Lazarus Chakwera won the 2020 presidential election, and Mutharika returned to power in the 2025 election.

  The 2024 V-Dem Democracy indices rank Malawi 74th among electoral democracies worldwide and 11th in Africa.

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• 6. Offices and Alliances

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  Malawi's current constitution was put into place on the 18th of May 1995. The president is both head of state and head of government, and is elected together with a vice president every five years. A second vice president may be appointed, but must come from a different party. The president names the Cabinet, whose members can come from inside or outside the legislature.

  The National Assembly has 193 members, elected every five years. The constitution also provides for a Senate of 80 seats, but none exists in practice. Since 2025, the Democratic Progressive Party of Peter Mutharika has been the ruling party, with the Malawi Congress Party as the main opposition.

  The judiciary is modelled on the English system. It includes a Supreme Court of Appeal, a High Court with general, constitutional and commercial sections, an Industrial Relations Court and Magistrates Courts. Magistrates Courts have five grades and include Child Justice Courts. The country is divided into three regions and 28 districts, which are split further into approximately 250 traditional authorities and 110 administrative wards. Local elections were held on the 21st of November 2000, with the UDF party winning 70% of the available seats. A second round scheduled for May 2005 was cancelled by the government.

  Abroad, Banda set a pro-Western course that continued into early 2011. The end of one-party rule strengthened ties with the United States, which runs the Peace Corps and several health and aid agencies in Malawi. Many Malawian students travel there for schooling.

  During the apartheid era, Malawi stayed close to South Africa, which strained its relationships with other African countries. After apartheid collapsed in 1994, diplomatic ties were made with all other African countries. Relations with Mozambique turned tense in 2010, partly over use of the Zambezi River and a shared electrical grid. In 2007, Malawi established diplomatic ties with China, and Chinese investment has grown since, despite worries about worker treatment and competition with local firms.

  Since 1985, Malawi has been a haven for refugees from other African countries, including Mozambique and Rwanda. Their arrival has strained the economy but also drawn significant aid. Malawi was the first country in southern Africa to receive peacekeeping training under the African Crisis Response Initiative.

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• 7. Farm and Fuel

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  Beginning in 2006, Malawi blended unleaded petrol with 10% ethanol produced at two plants inside the country, hoping to cut its dependence on imported fuel. The country imports all of its petroleum, since none is produced locally. In 2008, it began testing cars that run solely on ethanol.

  In that same year of 2006, poor harvests prompted a fertiliser subsidy called the Fertiliser Input Subsidy Programme. Reports said it was helping Malawi become a net exporter of food to its neighbours. In 2020, it was replaced by the Affordable Inputs Program, which extends the subsidy from maize seed and fertiliser to sorghum and rice seed.

  Around 85% of Malawians live in rural areas, and over 80% are engaged in subsistence farming. Agriculture supplies more than one-third of GDP and 90% of export revenues. Malawi invests 28% of its GDP in agriculture, more than any other African country. Tobacco, sugarcane, cotton, tea, corn, potatoes, sorghum, cattle and goats are the main products.

  Tobacco dominates the export ledger. Between 2007 and 2008, its share of export revenues jumped from 53% to 70%. Falling world prices, international pressure and likely World Health Organisation moves against burley leaf, the type Malawi grows, have pushed the government to steer farmers toward crops such as paprika. Malawian cannabis, known as Malawi Gold, has also drawn attention. A World Bank report called it among the best and finest in the world for recreational use, and the trade may feed police corruption.

  Aid has shaped the budget. In December 2000, the International Monetary Fund stopped disbursements over corruption concerns, and many donors followed, cutting the development budget by almost 80%. By 2005, Malawi received over 575 million US dollars in aid. A 2009 purchase of a private presidential jet was followed almost immediately by a nationwide fuel shortage. The official explanation was logistical problems, but a hard currency shortage caused by the purchase was the more likely culprit.

  In January 2015, floods struck southern Malawi. According to UNICEF, they affected more than a million people, including 336,000 who were displaced. Over 100 people died, and an estimated 64,000 hectares of cropland were washed away. A drought followed in 2016, and in January 2017 armyworms spread from around Zomba across nine of the 28 districts. The moths can wipe out whole fields of corn, and 2,000 hectares were destroyed.

  The share of people living under the poverty line fell from 54% in 1990 to 40% in 2006. Over the same period, the share of the ultra-poor dropped from 24% in 1990 to 15% in 2007.

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• 8. Daily Life

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  English is the official language, but Malawi's constitution declares no national language. Chichewa is spoken by 42.5% of people, Chitumbuka by 31.2% and Chiyao by 13.7%. Public primary school students are taught in Chichewa, while private primary schools teach in English if they follow the American or British curriculum.

  Government surveys indicate that 87% of the country is Christian and 11.6% is Muslim. The Roman Catholic Church counts 19% of Malawians as adherents, and the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian counts 18%. Jehovah's Witnesses number over 100,000.

  Free primary education was established in 1994 and became compulsory with the Revised Education Act in 2012. Primary enrollment rose from 58% in 1992 to 75% in 2007. Secondary attendance falls to approximately 25%, and dropout rates are higher for girls than for boys. There are four public universities, including Mzuzu University and the University of Malawi.

  Life expectancy at birth is 50.03 years. In 2022, an estimated 1,006,633 people were living with HIV/AIDS, and 440,000 children had been orphaned by the disease. Approximately 250 new people are infected each day, and at least 70% of hospital beds are occupied by patients with the disease. The government spends over 120,000 dollars each year on funerals for civil servants who die of it. In the 2024 Global Hunger Index, Malawi scored 21.9, a serious level of hunger.

  On rights, the legal marriage age was raised from 15 to 18 in 2015, after Malawi had one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world. In 2010, a couple perceived as homosexual received the maximum sentence of 14 years of hard labour each. They were pardoned two weeks later after United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon intervened. On the 26th of June 2021, Lilongwe hosted the country's first pride parade. The 2024 Global Peace Index ranks Malawi 79th of 163 countries.

  Malawi is nicknamed the Warm Heart of Africa for the perceived loving nature of its people. Its flag has black, red and green stripes with a red rising sun on the black one, standing for the dawn of freedom and hope for Africa. The National Dance Troupe was formed in 1987, and traditional music and dances appear at initiation rites and marriage ceremonies. Poet Jack Mapanje, writer Paul Zeleza and author Legson Kayira are among its internationally recognised literary figures.

  Football is the most common sport, introduced during British colonial rule. The country has had more success in netball, where its national team was ranked 6th in the world in March 2021. At the table, tea and fish are popular features of Malawian cuisine. Lake Malawi supplies chambo, a fish similar to bream, and usipa, similar to sardines. Nsima, a staple made from ground corn and served with meat and vegetables, is commonly eaten for lunch and dinner.

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