First woman to serve as president of Malawi, Joyce Banda to give lecture at K-State University in America

The first woman to serve as president of Malawi , Joyce Banda, is scheduled to deliver on Jan. 29 a Landon Lecture at Kansas State University, officials said Sunday.

Banda, who led Malawi  from 2012 to 2014, has been credited with working to shed laws that restricted press freedom, civil liberties and the democratic process.

“As the second female to lead an African nation, President Banda helped turn her country’s economy around and has been a longtime champion of women’s rights,” said Jackie Hartman, chairwoman of the lecture series.

Banda is to speak at 10:30 a.m. Jan. 29 in Forum Hall in the K-State Union. Her Manhattan talk is open to the public.

She  is also credited for repealing laws that had weakened democratic institutions and infringed on civil liberties .

The health of women and children was a priority in Banda’s presidency as she established the Presidential Initiative on Maternal Health and Safe Motherhood, which helped drop the maternal mortality rate in Malawi.

Before becoming president of Malawi, Banda served as the vice president, foreign minister, minister of gender and child welfare, and as a member of its Parliament.

Since leaving office, Banda serves on the boards of Nutrition International Canada and the Tana High Level Forum of Peace and Security in Africa. She is a member of the Council of Women World Leaders and a distinguished fellow with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Center for Global Development.

Before serving as president, Banda founded various businesses and organizations, including the National Association of Business Women of Malawi and the Joyce Banda Foundation, which focused on rural development and improving the lives of women and children.

She has also received the Africa Prize for Leadership for the Sustainable End of Hunger in 1997 and was name dAria’s third most powerful woman by Forbes Magazine in 2011.

Banda’s lecture will be the first Landon Lecture of the 2017-18 school year. Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, was scheduled to give a lecture on Nov. 27, but the university canceled the event because of a scheduling conflict