After receiving much of his education in ethnography, linguistics, history, and medicine overseas, Banda returned to Nyasaland to speak against colonialism and advocate independence from the United Kingdom.

[17] Around 1915–16, he left home on foot with Hanock Msokera Phiri, an uncle who had been a teacher at the nearby Livingstonia mission school, for Hartley, Southern Rhodesia (now Chegutu, Zimbabwe).

He apparently wanted to enroll at the famous Scottish Presbyterian Lovedale Missionary Institute in South Africa but completed his Standard 8 education without studying there.

With his financial support now ended, Banda earned some money on speaking engagements arranged by the Ghanaian educationalist Kwegyir Aggrey, whom he had met in South Africa.

Speaking at a Kiwanis club meeting he met Dr Herald, with whose help he enrolled as a pre-medical student at Indiana University, where he lodged with Mrs W. N. Culmer.

At Bloomington, he wrote several essays about his native Chewa tribe for the folklorist Stith Thompson, who introduced him to Edward Sapir, an anthropologist at the University of Chicago, to which, after four semesters, he transferred.

He then, still with financial support from these and other benefactors (including Walter B. Stephenson of the Delta Electric Company), studied medicine at Meharry Medical College in Tennessee,[20] from which he obtained an M.D.

He was a tenant of Mrs Amy Walton at this time in Alma Place in North Shields and sent a Christmas card to her every year right up until her death in the late-1960s.

[22] After World War II, he established a practice at the London suburb of Kilburn and became politically active by joining the Labour Party and Fabian Colonial Bureau, which was founded in 1940.

Banda was mostly viewed externally as a benign, albeit eccentric, leader, an image fostered by his English-style three-piece suits, matching handkerchiefs, walking stick and fly-whisk.

In 1983, three ministers – Dick Matenje, Twaibu Sangala, Aaron Gadama – and Member of Parliament David Chiwanga died in what was labelled officially as a "traffic accident".

The four were later bundled into Matenje's Peugeot 604 and driven to Thambani in Mwanza District, west of Blantyre, where the accident was staged: sources reported that their car had "overturned while the men had been attempting to escape into neighbouring Mozambique".

[33] Banda was one of the few African leaders to support the United States in the Vietnam War, a position he adopted in part due to his hatred of communism.

[35] Banda responded by accusing other African countries of hypocrisy, saying in a public speech to his parliament: "There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats" (Julius Caesar).

In turn, the British denied Banda the funding and budgetary support he needed to build his pet dream of a new capital city at Lilongwe, in his home region.

[39] Simultaneously, Banda used the MYP as couriers and active supporters of the Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO), which had been fighting against Machel's government since the late 1970s.

Western leaders and international aid donors no longer had any use for Third World authoritarian anti-Communist regimes like Banda's, all of which came under mounting pressure to democratize.

Donors told Banda that he had to implement reforms aimed at making his government transparent and accountable to the people and the international community as a condition for further aid.

Students of the University of Malawi at Chancellor College and the Polytechnic joined protests and demonstrations to support the bishops, forcing authorities to close the campuses.

Banda worked with the newly forming parties and the church, and made no protest when a special assembly stripped him of his title of President for Life, along with most of his powers.

″I wish to congratulate him wholeheartedly and offer him [Muluzi] my full support and cooperation,″ he said on state radio, marking an end to Malawi's 30 years of one-party rule.

[46] In it, he noted that: Systems of government are dynamic and they are bound to change in accordance with the wishes of and aspirations of the people...During my term of office, I selflessly dedicated myself to the good cause of Mother Malawi in the fight against Poverty, Ignorance and Disease among many other issues; but if within the process, those who worked in my government or through false pretence in my name or indeed unknowingly by me, pain and suffering was caused to anybody in this country in the name of nationhood, I offer my sincere apologies.

[51] Banda founded Chitukuko Cha Amai m'Malawi (CCAM) to address the concerns, needs, rights and opportunities for women in Malawi.

In 1964, after serving as a government minister in the colonial administration, Banda adopted a macroeconomic policy aimed at accelerating economic development for the betterment of Malawians.

However, by 1979–1980, the bubble had burst due to the global economic crisis set in motion by the Yom Kippur War between Israel and the Arabs in 1973.

Increasingly, the economy was rearranged into a political tool to serve the consumption needs of the emerging Malawian middle-class and thus render it less prone to revolution.

Banda personally founded Kamuzu Academy, a school modeled on Eton, at which Malawian children were taught Latin and Greek by expatriate classics teachers, and disciplined if they were caught speaking Chichewa.

It is claimed, probably incorrectly and unfairly, that he spent almost all the country's education budget on this project,[53] while increasingly ignoring the needs and welfare of the greater majority [80%] of Malawians toiling in the rural areas.

Eventually, with the collapse of the Cold War, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund arrived, imposing a series of Structural Adjustment Programs[54] from 1987.

It is believed that during his rule, Banda accumulated at least US$320 million in personal assets,[55] thought to be invested in everything from agriculture to mining interests in South Africa.