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

figure in the women’s movement in Malawi. A grassroots activist, she was particularly closely associated with efforts to improve education, maternal mortality, and to build sustainable incomes for rural women. Despite being elected in 2009 as Vice President, her deteriorating relationship with President Bingu wa Mutharika meant that she was increasingly marginalised from the business of government, and in 2011 she was excluded from the Cabinet. However, following the death of President Mutharika in April 2012, in line with the Malawian Constitution, she became President, the first woman head of state in the southern Africa region. For over a year, she has sought to turn around the failing economy and bring rapid improvements to the lives of the country’s poor majority. In 2014, she will face new elections, seeking a new mandate for a full five-year term of office. I accompanied President Banda to the opening of a new maternity centre in Dowa, a hour’s drive north of the capital city of Lilongwe, and afterwards interviewed her at her official residence, Kamuzu Palace.