About Malawi
Malawi, the “Warm Heart of Africa” and best known for its friendly people, is a small landlocked country in southeast Africa.
It is one of the world’s least developed and poorest countries, with an economy mostly based on agriculture. Two thirds of families are engaged in subsistence farming of small plots of local land, using hand tools to work the soil and harvest crops for their own consumption. Many years the land does not yield enough food for the family and food insecurity in many villages is high.
Like much of southern Africa, Malawi has been racked by the HIV/AIDS epidemic with an estimated 10% of the population living with the virus and access to good healthcare is limited. As a result, there are about 1.4 million orphans and vulnerable children in Malawi out of a population of 17.3 million.