Moving Towards a Post‐2015 Development Agenda – Lessons from Malawi: An Interview with Her Excellency Madam Joyce Banda, President of Malawi

摘要

For many years, Joyce Banda has been a well-knownfigure in the women's movement in Malawi. A grassrootsactivist, she was particularly closely associated withefforts to improve education, maternal mortality, and tobuild sustainable incomes for rural women. Despite beingelected in 2009 as Vice President, her deterioratingrelationship with President Bingu wa Mutharika meantthat she was increasingly marginalised from the businessof government, and in 2011 she was excluded from theCabinet. However, following the death of PresidentMutharika in April 2012, in line with the MalawianConstitution, she became President, the first woman headof state in the southern Africa region. For over a year, shehas sought to turn around the failing economy and bringrapid improvements to the lives of the country's poormajority. In 2014, she will face new elections, seeking anew mandate for a full five-year term of office. Iaccompanied President Banda to the opening of a newmaternity centre in Dowa, a hour's drive north of thecapital city of Lilongwe, and afterwards interviewed herat her official residence, Kamuzu Palace.