On what seemed like an ordinary morning of April 5 in 2012, Malawi woke to a loss that would echo across the country’s hills, villages, towns and trading centres.
Professor Bingu wa Mutharika, the country’s third Republican President, had died.
His death marked the end of a chapter defined by bold ambition, hard choices, and a relentless push to reshape a struggling nation into a state of self-reliance.
“This man gave us food. He gave us roads. He laid the foundation for our country,” says Chiza Mdambo, a retired teacher and now a farmer in Traditional Authority Wimbe in Kasungu.
Trained as an economist, Bingu built an extensive career across global institutions, shaping his conviction that Africa’s future lay in economic independence.
Speaking in 2005, he laid bare the reality facing Malawi, citing challenges such as extreme poverty, food insecurity, malnutrition, low investment and weak systems that constrained the economy.
Bingu challenged that Malawi was not poor but, rather, its people were.
So, charged with the realisation, the third Malawian leader set the t
one for what would follow, declaring his vision: “to kick-start macroeconomic growth, leading the country out of poverty to prosperity”.
“Prior to his presidency, Malawi was a very hungry nation largely because our priorities were not right. But when he came in, things changed immediately,” Mdambo says.
Bi ngu framed it in stark , uncompromising terms, declaring that hunger is an impediment to realisation of human rights.
“Democracy, governance and human rights cannot be achieved if the people are hungry,” he told world leaders at a food security conference, placing food security at the centre of his development agenda.
His response came in the form of the Farm Input Subsidy Programme (Fisp) in 2005, reaching out to 1.6 million smallholder farmers.
The move pushed the country’s harvest from 1.2 million metric tonnes (MT) to 2.7 million MT; and then to 3.4 million MT in the subsequent harvest.
Bingu turned the achievement in food security into a broader philosophy, taking advantage of his position as chairperson of the African Union where he argued that food security must be treated as a strategy.
“Food security must not be treated as a charitable issue: It is a matter of sovereignty, dignity and economic development,” he said.
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