GoKawiilIn 1994, Rwanda’s GDP per capita was $575. The country had just emerged from a genocide that killed roughly 800,000 people in 100 days, which amounts to about 11% of the population. The educated class had been murdered or fled, infrastructure was destroyed, and the state had collapsed.
Malawi in 1994 was poor too, but functioning. Hastings Banda’s three-decade dictatorship had just ended in a peaceful democratic transition. With a GDP per capita of $976, roughly 70% higher than Rwanda’s, Malawi was meaningfully better off than post-genocide Rwanda by any reasonable measure.
Thirty years later, Rwanda’s GDP per capita is $3,265. This is nearly six times higher than its 1994 trough, and roughly twice Malawi’s $1,634. Rwanda's GDP per capita has grown by about 4.5% per year in real terms over the past decade, but Malawi's has fallen for three consecutive years.
The rest of the East African comparison group has pulled away too. Kenya’s GDP per capita is roughly $5,800, over three and a half times Malawi's. The sub-Saharan African average is $4,873, also nearly three times. Even within a region full of poor countries, Malawi is unusual.
A few headline numbers:
The World Bank ranks Malawi among the ten poorest countries in the world by GDP per capita at PPP.
70% of Malawians live on less than $2.15 a day. Under the World Bank’s revised $3-a-day poverty line, it’s 75%.
Malawi is home to 0.24% of the world’s population but roughly 2% of the world’s extreme poor.
GDP per capita has fallen for three consecutive years (2022–2024). Population growth of 2.6% per year is now outrunning real economic growth.
Roughly 80% of the population works in agriculture, mostly on rain-fed maize plots. About 76% of farms are smaller than one hectare.
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