The Department of Economics (DoE) in the University of Malawi is the main institution for training economists in Malawi through its undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Since its establishment in 1965 until recently, the DoE has been running mainly the undergraduate programme within the framework of the general degree of Bachelor of Social Science programme.

The Department takes the approach of guiding inquiry of the subject matter. From the introductory courses, the studies promoted interrogation of a trade-off between equity and efficiency concepts to the distinction between growth and development among various subjects. The role of the market as the main signal of decisions regarding production and consumption to the failure of the markets and furthermore to government as an entity correcting market failure to finally government failure. Various branches of economics address the basic assumption in economics that contrary to theory, the markets will not efficiently provide Pareto optimal outcomes.

The undergraduate programmes in Economics (Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Bachelor of Arts in Development Economics) each run for four years. The first two years provide foundation courses in economics and quantitative methods (mathematics and statistics). Additionally, financial and managerial accounting are also offered in the second year. In the third and fourth years, courses in advanced quantitative methods and specialized fields are offered. In the final year, more specialized courses are offered with a final year dissertation as a research paper under faculty supervision.

In 1992, the DoE started offering a post-graduate programme at the Masters level and is one of the Departments in the University of Malawi with the longest history of postgraduate training on a sustainable basis. The programme, MA (Economics), has graduated several economists from Malawi and other African countries including Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Ghana, Gambia, and Liberia. Some of them are senior managers in the private and public services and international organisations; others have since completed PhD or are pursuing their PhD programmes elsewhere. The Department also offers a Master’s degree in Economics (Non-residential) which is offered on a block release basis. Since 2002, the Master’s programme has also been offered under a parallel delivery mode of non-residence or block-release. In 2005, a PhD in Economics degree by research was launched and to date four students have graduated.