Located in southeastern Africa, the landlocked country of Malawi remained in the early twenty-first century one of the poorest in the world. In addition to constraints imposed by relatively limited endowments and high population density, Malawi has one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the world, with upwards of 15 percent of its 15 million people infected as of 2004. The country also faces the challenge of sustaining and deepening the democratic system of governance inaugurated in 1994.

The British formally took control of colonial "Nyasaland," as Malawi was then known, in 1891. Anticolonial agitation began in earnest in the mid- to late 1950s. During this period Hastings Kamuzu Banda (1898–1997), a wealthy doctor, returned to his native country to lead the struggle against British rule. Malawi became an independent country in 1964. Although the new country inherited a constitutional framework that imposed limits on government officeholders, Banda crafted an authoritarian regime ensuring...