first president of Malaŵi (formerly Nyasaland) and the principal leader of the Malaŵi nationalist movement. He ruled Malaŵi from 1963 to 1994, combining totalitarian political controls with conservative economic policies.
Banda's birthday was officially given as May 14, 1906, but he was believed to have been born before the turn of the century. He was the son of a peasant and received his earliest education in a mission school. He attended college in the United States, where he received his medical degree in 1927. He then took another medical degree at the University of Edinburgh (1941) and practiced in London from 1945 to 1953.
Banda first became involved in his homeland's politics when white settlers in the region demanded the federation of the Rhodesias and Nyasaland in 1949. Banda and others in Nyasaland strongly objected to this extension of white dominance, but the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was nevertheless established in 1953. In 1953–58 Banda practiced medicine in Ghana, but from 1956 he was under increasing pressure from Nyasa nationalists to return; he finally did so, to a tumultuous welcome, in 1958. As president of the Nyasaland African Congress, he toured the country making antifederation speeches and was held partly responsible by the colonial government for increasing African resentment and disturbances. In 1959 a state of emergency was declared, and he was imprisoned by the British colonial authorities. He was released in 1960 and a few months later accepted British constitutional proposals granting Africans in Nyasaland a majority in the Legislative Council. He was minister of natural resources and local government in 1961–63, and he became prime minister in 1963, the year the federation was finally dissolved. He retained the post of prime minister when Nyasaland achieved independence in 1964 under the name of Malaŵi.
Shortly after independence, some members of Banda's governing cabinet resigned in protest against his autocratic methods and his accommodation with South Africa and the Portuguese colonies. In 1965 a rebellion broke out, led by two of these former ministers, but it failed to take hold in the countryside. Malaŵi became a republic in 1966 with Banda as president. He headed an austere, autocratic one-party regime, maintained firm control over all aspects of the government, and jailed or executed his opponents. He was declared president for life in 1971. Banda concentrated on building up his country's infrastructure and increasing agricultural productivity. He established friendly trading relations with South Africa and other neighbours through which landlocked Malaŵi's overseas trade had to pass, and his foreign-policy orientation was decidedly pro-Western.
Widespread domestic protests and the withdrawal of Western financial aid forced Banda to legalize other political parties in 1993. He was voted out of office in the country's first multiparty presidential elections, held in 1994.
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