Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Neighboring Malawi (17.7 million), like Zambia, has been able to sustain democracy for more than two decades. Malawi has an almost totally agricultural economic base and is also unremittingly challenged by environmental degradation. This country’s dependence on corn as its food staple, its variable climate, and its severely fragmented land-use system have inhibited economic growth—which nevertheless has risen steadily at nearly 6 percent a year since the turn of this century." [Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts, 17th Edition, p. 318-9]