Before he was the Father of Malawi, Hastings Kamuzu Banda was a young African scholar crossing the red clay paths of Central State University in Ohio and later walking the white-pillared corridors of Meharry Medical College in Tennessee. It was in those Black institutions—far from colonial Nyasaland—that he found the intellectual courage and cultural clarity to imagine an independent African state governed by its own people. Banda didn’t just earn degrees at HBCUs; he absorbed a vision. A vision where Black institutions were sovereign, where education was a weapon, and where leadership was forged in community, not conquest. His presidency in Malawi would later reflect both the power and pitfalls of that vision. Continue reading →