• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Malawi - People

Malawi is one of sub-Saharan Africa's most densely populated countries. The population of Lilongwe--Malawi's capital since 1971--of 674,000 makes it the largest city in the country (Malawi population and housing census). All government ministries and the parliament are located in Lilongwe. Blantyre remains Malawi's major commercial center with a population of 661,000. Malawi's president resides in Lilongwe. The Supreme Court is seated in Blantyre. While Chichewa is the national language and Chitumbuka widely spoken in the Northern Region, English is the official language of the country and the language of the commercial sector.

The Chewas constitute 90% of the population of the central region; the Nyanja tribe predominates in the south and the Tumbuka in the north. In addition, significant numbers of the Tongas live in the north; Ngonis--an offshoot of the Zulus who came from South Africa in the early 1800s--live in the lower northern and lower central regions; and the Yao, who are mostly Muslim, live along the southeastern border with Mozambique. Approximately 50% of the population lives in the southern region.

The Chewa ethnic group is found in some parts of Mozambique and Zambia, as well as in Malawi. History says the tribe originated in the 15th century in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. The paramount chief of all the Chewas is Chief Undi, who lives in Zambia. In Malawi, the first president, Hastings Kamuzu Banda, was a Chewa. Under his rule, Nyau dancers were accorded special respect at his political functions, and the language of the Chewas – Chichewa – became the national language.

Malawi has made great improvements in maternal and child health, but has made less progress in reducing its high fertility rate. In both rural and urban areas, very high proportions of mothers are receiving prenatal care and skilled birth assistance, and most children are being vaccinated. Malawi’s fertility rate, however, has only declined slowly, decreasing from more than 7 children per woman in the 1980s to about 5.5 today.

HIV is very prevalent in Malawi. In 2007, the UNAIDS reported that 12.1 percent of Malawi’s adult population is HIV-positive. AIDS is an incurable, fatal disease. This and other STIs are far more common on this continent than in the United States.

Malaria is hyper-endemic and is present throughout the year and in most of the country. It can be lethal if left untreated, so prevention and early recognition of infection are extremely important. Malaria continues to be a major public health problem in Malawi. It is endemic in more than 95 percent of the country and is one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality across all age groups, Malaria is responsible for approximately 36 percent of all outpatient visits across all ages. Among children under five years, malaria parasite prevalence by microscopy was 33 percent nationally. Transmission is perennial in most areas and peaks during the rainy season from November to April.

The Ministry of Health’s National Malaria Control Program has been able to scale up the distribution of artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs), intermittent preventive treatment for pregnant women (IPTp) using sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP), and ITNs. Progress to date is promising; between 2006 and 2015, the mortality rate for children under five years of age declined from 122 deaths per 1,000 live births to an estimated 64/1,000.

Malawi has one of the world's highest rates of child marriage. Half of girls wed before their 18th birthday and nearly one in eight is married by 15. The country’s parliament passed a law in 2015 raising the minimum marrying age to 18. There's a tension between the letter of the law and a piece of national legislation saying another thing, and then customary or Tribal Law saying another thing altogether.

Nonetheless, Malawians prefer smaller families than in the past, and women are increasingly using contraceptives to prevent or space pregnancies. Rapid population growth and high population density is putting pressure on Malawi’s land, water, and forest resources. Reduced plot sizes and increasing vulnerability to climate change, further threaten the sustainability of Malawi’s agriculturally based economy and will worsen food shortages. About 80% of the population is employed in agriculture.

Historically, Malawians migrated abroad in search of work, primarily to South Africa and present-day Zimbabwe, but international migration became uncommon after the 1970s, and most migration in recent years has been internal. During the colonial period, Malawians regularly migrated to southern Africa as contract farm laborers, miners, and domestic servants. In the decade and a half after independence in 1964, the Malawian Government sought to transform its economy from one dependent on small-scale farms to one based on estate agriculture. The resulting demand for wage labor induced more than 300,000 Malawians to return home between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s. In recent times, internal migration has generally been local, motivated more by marriage than economic reasons.