The Republic of Malawi lies in southeastern Africa, bordered by Tanzania in the north, Zambia in the west, and Mozambique in the east and south. The country has a population of approximately 11 million (2002), though only 486,000 people live in the capital Lilongwe. Blantyre, population 533,000, is Malawi's largest city and commercial centre. Malawi is divided into a staggering (for such a small country) 30 administrative regions: Balaka, Blantyre City, Blantyre Rural, Chikwawa, Chiradzulu, Chitipa, Dedza, Dowa, Karonga, Kasungu, Lilongwe City, Lilongwe Rural, Machinga, Mangochi, Mchinji, Mulanje, Mwanza, Mzimba, Mzuzu City, Nkhata Bay, Nkhotakota, Nsanje, Ntcheu, Ntchisi, Phalombe, Rumphi, Salima, Thyolo, Zomba Municipality, and Zomba Rural.

Geographically, Malawi is long and narrow, with Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi) making up 20% of its total area. English and Chichewa are the official languages, and virtually all Malawians are Bantu-speaking. Major ethnic groups include the Tumbuka, Ngoni, and Tonga in the north; and the Chewa, Yao, Nguru, and Nyanja in the centre and south. Three quarters of Malawians are Christian (mainly Presbyterian and Roman Catholic), roughly 20% are Muslim, and the rest mostly follow indigenous religions.

Early History

Archaeological evidence indicates that Malawi was possibly inhabited by human beings as early as 8000 BC. It is thought that these prehistoric ancestors were probably related to the San and ancestral to the Twa and Fula peoples, whom the Bantu-speaking peoples claimed to have found when they migrated into the region between the 1st and 4th centuries. The identities of these Bantu-speaking peoples are uncertain, though oral tradition points to the Kalimanjira, Katanga, and Zimba.

A second wave of Bantu-speaking peoples arrived between the 13th and 15th centuries, and they established the Maravi Confederacy around 1480. This marked the beginning of recorded Malawian history and the new confederacy reached the height of its power in the 17th century. Although Europeans would not arrive in Malawi until the late 19th century, the development of the slave trade on Africa's east coast in the late 18th century would cause the downfall of the Maravi Confederacy as the Ngoni and Yao continually invaded in order to sell their Malawian captives to Arab and Swahili merchants on the Indian Ocean coast.

Colonial History

Dr. Livingstone, I presume? Famous Scottish explorer David Livingstone arrived on Lake Nyasa in 1859 and was responsible for drawing European attention to the slave trade there, as well as allowing Christianity to gain a foothold in the region. Missionary activity and the threat of Portuguese annexation led Great Britain to step in and proclaim the Shire Highlands Protectorate in 1889, followed by Malawi's incorporation into the British Central African Protectorate in 1891 (known as Nyasaland from 1907 to 1964). The slave trade was outlawed in the protectorate by the British in the 1890s.

A small-scale revolt in 1915 against British rule was easily suppressed, but the action would prove to be an inspiration to other Africans working towards independence from colonial rule. The protectorate's first political movement, the moderate Nyasaland African Congress, was formed in 1944, and the first Africans were admitted to the legislative council in 1949. The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was then established in 1953 in the face of great opposition. Nyasaland's African population feared that the more aggressively white-oriented policies of Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) would be applied to them.

Post-Colonial History

In the mid-1950s, the Nyasaland African Congress, led by H.B.M. Chipembere and Kanyama Chiume, became more radical. In 1958, Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda became its leader and renamed it the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) in 1959. After a series of MCP-organized protests, the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was ended in 1963, and on July 6, 1964, Nyasaland achieved independece as Malawi.

Banda led the country as its first prime minister and, after Malawi became a republic in 1966, its president. He then made himself president for life in 1971. Banda's public support quickly eroded as he began governing autocratically, allowing Europeans to retain considerable influence and refusing to oppose white minority rule in South Africa (he was the first head of an independent Black African nation to visit in the apartheid era). Banda managed to crush two revolts in 1965 and in 1967, led by Chipembere and Yatuta Chisiza respectively, and despite the political turmoil, Malawi remained quite prosperous through the 1970s due to substantial foreign investment.

In the 1980s, tensions with neighbouring Mozambique grew over allowing anti-government rebels from the country refuge in Malawi, especially after the influx of more than 600,000 refugees from Mozambique in the latter part of the decade. Mozambique closed its border, forcing Malawi to use South African ports at great expense. Banda then began to eliminate powerful officials through expulsions and possibly assassinations in order to hold onto power.

In 1992, the worst drought of the century hit Malawi, sparking violent protests against Banda's rule. Worse still, the West suspended aid to the country in the same year. Malawians voted to end one-party rule in a 1993 referendum and parliament passed legislation to establish multiparty democratic rule and to abolish the life-long presidency. In 1994, Banda was defeated by Bakili Muluzi, a former protégé, who called for a policy of national reconciliation. Muluzi was reelected in 1999.