Country Overview
The Southern African nation of Malawi is bordered by Mozambique to the south and west, Zambia to the east, and Tanzania to the north. As of 2023, its population is slightly over 20 million and is growing quickly. Its capital city is Lilongwe and it, along with its commercial capital, Blantyre, is urbanising quickly and, at current growth rates, will become a megacity in 50 years. Right now, most of the country is rural and the majority of the population depend on subsistence farming.
Considered one of the world’s least-developed countries, Malawi struggles with widespread poverty, high infant mortality and the effects of diseases such as malaria, cholera and HIV/AIDS, though it has seen modest improvements in its education, health and economic outcomes since 2000. Climate change threatens to upend the balance of things in Malawi, and the damage and loss of life caused in its southern regions by the unprecedented and record-breaking Cyclone Freddy in March 2023 represents a sobering warning of new challenges that may lie ahead.
Malawi is stable and peaceful. It is a diverse melting pot of ethnic groups, languages and cultures. Its centrepiece is Lake Malawi—the fifth largest freshwater lake in the world—which provides sustenance to fishing communities across the country and is omnipresent in Malawian culture. Malawians are renowned for their friendly and helpful disposition, earning it the moniker: ‘The Warm Heart of Africa’.
History and Politics
The region now known as Malawi became widely populated around the 10th century as migratory Bantu communities settled and rendered the various ethnic groups that still make up the majority of Malawi’s population to this day. The 16th century saw the establishment of the Kingdom of Maravi, from which the nation’s modern name is derived, and under this rulership Malawi became involved with Portugese elements in the region and became a small part of the lesser-known Indian Ocean slave trade.
Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone came upon what is now known as Lake Malawi in 1859 and set in motion Malawi’s eventual colonial occupation by the British. His name can still be found in Livingstonia, one of Malawi’s most famous destinations, and Scotland maintains a special relationship with Malawi to this day. In 1889, the region of modern Malawi was established as a British protectorate that came to be known as Nyasaland.
In 1964, with decolonisation looming, Nyasaland became independent of British rule, produced a new constitution and a doctor named Hastings Kamuzu Banda—who had been a key figure in opposition to British presence in the region—was sworn in as president. A complicated and controversial figure who presided over a totalitarian one-party state for almost over 30 years, Banda’s legacy is still subject to debate.
A 1993 referendum during Banda’s rule saw the one-party state abolished and a peaceful transfer of power to a democratic government. After five nominally legitimate elections, the results of the 2019 election were overturned by the Malawi Constitutional Court after irregularities and widespread fraud were identified. In 2020, elections were re-held and incumbent president Lazarus Chakwera was elected.
Economy
Malawi’s economy is heavily based in agriculture, which accounts for around 1/3rd of the country’s GDP. Its biggest export crop is tobacco, which accounted for 46.1% of its exports in 2021 according to the OEC. While important to the economy, tobacco production has also contributed to Malawi having the 4th highest deforestation rate in the world, and the industry has been flagged for using child labour by many international organisations. For the majority of Malawians who survive through subsistence farming, maize and cassava are their sources of food.
Malawi is highly dependent on foreign aid, which comprised around a quarter of its national income in 2019. This, in combination with its extremely undiversified export profile has seen the Malawian economy rocked by the cascade of economic shocks the world has undergone recently. Inflation resulting from high oil and grain prices caused by the Russia-Ukraine conflict and other post-COVID factors and a 25% devaluation of the Malawian Kwacha under the Chakwera administration has led to across-the-board increases in the prices of goods and services and has made local industry difficult to sustain. Additionally, the recessionary outlook of many countries has led many of them to reduce their overall aid spending, and, of the aid that remains, much is being diverted to Ukraine.
Development Challenges
Poor infrastructure is a key obstacle to Malawi’s development goals. Malawi’s mostly hydroelectric energy network is unreliable and vulnerable to exogenous shocks such as cyclones. Water is another important area; wells and water treatment facilities have been established in some regions of Malawi almost exclusively through aid funding and Chinese infrastructure projects. While the main road that links the aforementioned large cities of Lilongwe and Blantyre to Mzuzu in the north is well maintained, much of the country is impossible to access for the heavy machinery required for public works initiatives.
Malawi almost entirely lacks an industrial base, which makes grassroots transformation difficult to achieve. Producing locally is vastly more expensive than doing so abroad and local businesses are therefore price-uncompetitive; many charities that cater to Malawi exist outside of the Malawian economy, producing their products in bulk in other, cheaper countries such as Tanzania and India. The huge economies of scale effect that total reliance on importing or outsourcing production causes means that smaller businesses, charities and local organisations that aim to provide to rural communities are inherently disadvantaged. As a result of these intrinsic barriers, the existing structures in place in rural areas tend to be weaker and less reliable in addition to being more difficult and costly to access. Local Malawians looking to undertake ambitious development projects without external support are effectively priced out of doing so, and those who receive external support are left with no way of maintaining the projects once that support is gone. This becomes a self-perpetuating cycle whereby many international development projects see fit to funnel their funds into the urban areas, where a given amount of money goes considerably further, compounding the isolation of rural areas and making it yet more difficult for the self-sustaining, grassroots change that is needed for Malawi to achieve aid-free development to be realised.