Malawi

Malawi: Low-Income Economy With a Stale Reserves Reading

Malawi's GDP stood at $11.32 billion in 2024, with GDP per capita of $522.57 and a population of 21,655,286, according to World Bank WDI data. V-Dem's 2025 wave records an electoral democracy score of 0.557, a liberal democracy score of 0.462, and a state capacity score of 0.567 — figures clustered in the middle of V-Dem's 0-1 scale.

SIPRI's 2025 Milex data put military expenditure at $162.8 million, equivalent to 1.145 percent of GDP under SIPRI's own GDP series; that ratio should not be recomputed against the World Bank GDP figure above. The Correlates of War National Material Capabilities dataset recorded 11,000 active-duty personnel in 2022 and a CINC score of 0.00066394859 for the same year.

On fiscal position, the IMF's World Economic Outlook projects government debt at 74.5 percent of GDP for 2026.

The Correlates of War CINC score of 0.00066394859, a fractional share of global material capability built from population, military personnel, and industrial inputs across the full international system, should be read alongside the 11,000-person active-duty figure above rather than as a standalone strength ranking. Both the personnel count and the CINC score date to 2022, an earlier year than the 2025 governance and defense-spending figures cited above, so they describe an earlier snapshot of the armed forces than the rest of this briefing.

Energy

Our World in Data figures put primary energy consumption at 0.0399 exajoules in 2023 and electricity generation at 1.83 terawatt-hours in 2024. Both oil and gas production are recorded at 0.0 terawatt-hours, dated 2016.

Data Gaps

The reserves figure in this bundle, $594.5 million, is sourced to World Bank WDI and dated 2020 — well behind the rest of this briefing's 2024-2026 figures, and it should not be read as a current external-buffer position. The oil and gas production figures are also stale, dated 2016. The 2026 government debt figure is an IMF projection rather than an outturn. No conflict-event or alliance data are present in this bundle, and the absence of a current reserves reading is a material gap for any assessment of Malawi's capacity to absorb external shocks.

Sources: World Bank WDI, IMF WEO, SIPRI Milex, Correlates of War NMC, V-Dem v15, Our World in Data (Energy).