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Due to resource constraints, IRIN is not updating the country profile below.
Updated humanitarian country information can be found instead at the Malawi country page on ReliefWeb [http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/dbc.nsf/doc104?OpenForm&rc=1&cc=mwi].
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 MALAWI
Humanitarian Country Profile |
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Background
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Last update: March 2007 |
Malawi, bordered by Zambia in the west, Tanzania in the east and surrounded by Mozambique in the south, is thought to have been inhabited 60,000 years ago when the first humans moved into the vicinity of Lake Malawi. These Khoisan hunter-gatherers were later largely replaced by Bantu people. The first significant European encounter was with explorer David Livingstone in 1859.
The British protectorate of Nyasaland, established in 1891, became the independent nation of Malawi in 1964. After three decades of one-party rule under President Hastings Banda, the country held multiparty elections in 1994. President Dr Bingu wa Mutharika was elected in May 2004.
Malawi is one of the most underdeveloped countries in the world, ranked 166 out of 177 countries in the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Index.
Peace and security
There have been disputes with Tanzania over the boundary in Lake Malawi and the meandering Songwe River, but they have been non-confrontational. Political tensions rise around election time, and there were limited demonstrations by the opposition during the 2004 general and presidential polls, which protested against the results.
Mutharika launched an anti-corruption crusade on assuming office, putting him on a collision course with his predecessor, Bakili Muluzi, who heads the country’s largest party.
Although minor ethnic rivalries still exist, and some of the major parties depend on regional support bases, there is no significant friction between ethnic or religious groups.
IDPs/Refugees
Malawi’s proximity to the volatile Great Lakes region has made it a transit corridor for many refugees moving to more secure southern African states. The country’s generous policy allows asylum-seekers to enter Malawi fairly easily.
Figures in the UNDP Human Development Report 2006 indicate that approximately 4,000 official refugees are seeking shelter in Malawi.
Democracy and governance
Hastings Banda’s one-party rule was characterised by oppression; a critical letter from the Roman Catholic Church in 1992 created an unprecedented opportunity that captured the mood for change. Banda lost a referendum on multiparty reform in 1993, and the army stepped in to disarm the ruling party's feared paramilitary force. Bakili Muluzi, founder of the United Democratic Front (UDF), one of the new parties to emerge, won the 1994 election with 47 percent of the vote to Banda's 34 percent.
Muluzi's first term is generally regarded as a success in laying the foundations of democracy. His second term, beginning with allegations of election fraud, was characterised by charges of corruption - which led to a donor aid freeze. Political intolerance also reared its head, with a UDF militia – ironically called the Young Democrats – used to intimidate opponents. Muluzi's attempt to change the constitution to run for a third term in 2004 was blocked by civil society groups and members of his own party. Muluzi handpicked Mutharika, an economist who had formed his own small party, to stand as the UDF's candidate.
Mutharika won, despite complaints over the poll's fairness, but then demonstrated an unexpected independence. His commitment to economic reform, fiscal restraint and anti-corruption measures put him in direct conflict with senior UDF figures backed by Muluzi, who retained the party's chairmanship. Mutharika left the UDF to form the Democratic Progressive Party. He survived an impeachment attempt in 2005, and arrested Vice-President Cassim Chilumpha, a Muluzi ally, on treason charges in early 2006. The move was seen by many as reminiscent of the repression of the Banda years and raised concern over renewed political instability. Mutharika has made no secret of his admiration for Banda: having proclaimed him a national hero in 2006, he has vowed to “continue his work”.
Media
Radio plays a key role in informing the public in Malawi. The state-run Malawi Broadcasting Corporation is the main national broadcaster but there are also a number of privately owned radio channels that cover controversial topics. Television was introduced in 1999.
Several privately owned publications offer a range of views but there have been reports of government pressure on newspaper journalists. Freedom of speech and media is constitutionally guaranteed, but according to press watchdog Freedom House, these rights are occasionally restricted. The government does not exercise overt censorship, but freedom of expression in Malawi is threatened in more subtle ways, resulting in some self-censorship. The Protected Emblems and Names Act prohibits insulting the president on pain of fines and prison terms.
Economy
Landlocked Malawi is among the world's least developed countries. The economy is predominately agricultural, with about 90 percent of the population living in rural areas. Agriculture accounted for nearly 40 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and 80 percent of export revenues in 2005. But its main natural resource, agricultural land, has increasingly come under pressure from rapid population growth.
Tobacco, which accounts for more than 60 percent of exports, is key to short-term growth and efforts to diversify in the wake of falling tobacco prices have had limited success. The economy depends on substantial inflows of economic assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and individual donor nations.
Malawi hopes donors will continue the phased cancellation of its US$643 million debt as a reward for sticking to painful economic reforms under the Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative. The HIPC completion point was reached in September 2006, making Malawi eligible for further debt relief from the World Bank, the IMF and the African Development Bank under the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative.
Population
Malawi has a population of about 12.9 million people, according to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). There are 11 ethnic groups: Chewa, Nyanja, Tumbuka, Yao, Lomwe, Sena, Tonga, Ngoni, Ngonde, Asian and European, of whom 79.9 percent are Christian and 12.8 percent Muslim. The most recent population growth rate estimates are 2.2 percent per annum.
Malawians are still predominately rural, with 83.3 percent of the population choosing to live outside the main urban centres. According to the UNFPA, the average Malawian’s life expectancy has decreased to 39.6 years because of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Development indicators
Progress toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) has been hampered by the spread of HIV/AIDS and the droughts between 2001 and 2005, which affected about five million people.
Between 1996 and 2004, 22 percent of children under five suffered low birth weights. From 1975 to 2004 GDP growth averaged -0.4 percent, far too low to improve living standards for a population growing by 2.2 percent per year, according to the UNDP Human Development 2006 report.
Malawi is, however, among the few countries in Africa on track to meet the MDG on reducing the under-five mortality rate, which declined to 133 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2004 - a 43 percent reduction in 12 years. But life expectancy dropped from 41.8 years in 1975 to 39.6 in 2004, the UN noted.
Education
Between 2002 and 2004, Malawi spent 6 percent of GDP on education. Free primary education, introduced by Muluzi, led to a leap in school attendance. At present, 95 percent of children in the primary education age bracket attend school compared with 48 percent in 1991.
However, only 25 percent of teenagers attend secondary school – which is not free. Criticism has been levelled at the quality of education provided. The need for poor children to work to contribute financially to the family unit impedes attendance. During the last cycle of weather-induced food shortages, the World Food Programme introduced school-feeding schemes to keep children in class.
Literacy among the youth increased from 63.2 percent in 1990 to 76 percent in 2004. Adult literacy stands at about 64.1 percent, according to the UNDP’s latest Human Development Index.
Children
Malawian women are giving birth to fewer children than they were 30 years ago. Statistics show that between 2000 and 2005 there were 6.1 births per woman, compared with 7.4 between 1970 and 1995.
However, because Malawi is one of the most densely populated countries in Africa, the government views this fertility rate – as well as its maternal mortality ratio of 1,800 deaths per 100,000 live births - as unacceptably high.
According to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 48 percent of children below five are stunted, 22 percent are underweight or malnourished and 5 percent are wasted or severely malnourished. Furthermore, roughly 400,000 children under the age of 15 have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS.
Health
Most Malawians do not have access to a high level of healthcare. With migration threatening to outstrip training of new medical personnel and despite efforts to improve pay and conditions, the brain drain is increasingly cited as causing the growing health skills crisis in the country. Malawi has two doctors for every 100,000 people: the lowest score of all countries covered in the UNDP Human Development Report 2006.
HIV/AIDS
According to WHO, the government is committed to addressing Malawi’s HIV/AIDS crisis. The country has progressively scaled up the health-sector response to the pandemic, which now affects an estimated 14.1 percent of adults. Malawi has managed to keep its ambitious anti-AIDS treatment plan on target: as of end-September 2006, 70,000 Malawians were accessing anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment, about 62,000 at public health services. According to the five-year plan, an additional 40,000 patients will begin receiving treatment in 2007 and another 45,000 in each of the following three years.
Knowledge of preventative methods among the population is still relatively low. Only 41 percent of men and 34 percent of women are aware of how to prevent infection.
Food security
Food security in Malawi is precarious. Most Malawians rely on subsistence farming but crop yields are generally poor – the result of small land holdings with limited agricultural inputs and a reliance on rain-fed agriculture, despite Lake Malawi - one of the largest on the continent. The country is also prone to natural disasters - from drought to flooding. Forty to 60 percent of rural households face chronic food insecurity for between two and five months every year.
Malawi enjoyed bumper harvests in the late 1990s after good rains and government subsidies for agricultural inputs through a ‘starter pack programme’, when parcels of fertiliser, hybrid maize seed, and either groundnuts or soybeans were distributed to farming households. But a reduction in subsidies coupled with poor rains followed, leading to huge shortfalls in 2000–2001, and the Malawian government was forced to import 150,000 metric tonnes of food from neighbouring South Africa.
The government, with help from the donor community, responded with a fertiliser and seed subsidy scheme in 2003 and, for the first time in five years, Malawi now has a surplus of maize after a bumper harvest in 2006. According to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net) household food security at the beginning of 2007 was “good” with food available to most households.
The causes of food shortages in Malawi have been complex. Distortions in domestic markets, lapses in the government's early warning systems, mismanagement of food reserves and the loss of labour to HIV/AIDS have all put pressure on food production.
Gender issues
The social situation of women in Malawi leaves them seriously disadvantaged in almost every sector of development compared with men.
This is largely attributed to social attitudes entrenched in Malawi culture, which discriminates against women. Consequently, most women are subjected to severe and harsh living conditions; they also shoulder a higher percentage of responsibilities and manage heavy workloads in the community.
UNDP figures show that the average life expectancy of a Malawian woman is 39.6, slightly below that of her male counterpart with 40. Adult literacy statistics show that only 54 percent of women can read and write compared with 74.9 percent of men.
Although women were given the right to vote and stand for election in 1961, they represent only 13.6 percent of parliament.
Human rights
The country’s rights record has improved under multi-party democracy and Malawi has signed up to many of the international instruments to protect human rights.
The government, however, has been slow to file reports on progress in these areas, according to the Malawi Human Rights Commission. Two areas of particular concern to the commission at present are the rights of prisoners and equality between the sexes. The government’s arrest of Vice-President Cassim Chilumpha in early 2006 on charges of treason is seen by many as reminiscent of the repression of the Banda years and has raised concern over renewed political instability.
Humanitarian needs
Malawi’s major humanitarian needs lie in the areas of food security and addressing HIV/AIDS.
A good harvest in 2006 provided a cereal surplus of 250,000 tonnes. However, the country remains chronically vulnerable to a complex set of issues – such as food insecurity, HIV/AIDS and weakened government capacity. |
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| Malawi in figures | · Population: 12.9 million
· Pop. growth rate: 2.2%
· GDP per capita: US$646
· Pop. below poverty line: 41.7%
· Life expectancy: 39.6 years
· Infant mortality: 110/1,000 live births
· Population undernourished: 34%
· HIV prevalence: 14.1%
· Adult literacy rate: 64.1%
· Doctors/people: two per 100,000 people
· Displaced people: N/A
· Refugees: 4,000
· Human Development Index: 0.400 (HDI 2006 Rank 166)
Sources: UNDP, UNFPA |
| Basic facts | Capital: Lilongwe
Language: English, Chichewa (both official) and several Bantu languages
Ethnic Groups: Maravi (including Chewa, Nyanja, Tonga and Tumbuka) 58%, Lomwe 18%, Yao 13%, Ngoni 7%
Religions: Traditional, Christian 50% and Muslim 20%.
Geography: landlocked. Lake Malawi, 580km long, is the country's most prominent physical feature (118,484 sqkm)
Border countries: Mozambique, Zambia and Tanzania
Natural resources: limestone, arable land, hydropower, unexploited deposits of uranium, coal and bauxite.
Agriculture products: tobacco, sugar, cotton, tea, corn, potatoes, cassava, sorghum, coffee, peanuts, wood products
Sources: BBC, Reuters AlertNet, Worldpress |
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