Malawi

Malawi is unlikely to be directly involved in significant armed conflict in the next three years, with risk concentrated in episodic political violence and limited exposure through external deployments rather than domestic war.

Most likely: continued food-price pressure and fiscal tightening drive demonstrations and sporadic clashes with police, plus targeted political intimidation around institutions and courts. These remain below the threshold of sustained armed conflict. Watch for escalation if opposition arrests expand, policing becomes more lethal, or vigilante groups begin persistent organized violence. External risk: limited chance of casualties tied to DRC deployment.

Over five years, repeated climate shocks and debt stress could increase protest frequency and normalize political violence, raising the chance of deadly public-order incidents. A higher-end conflict scenario would require a severe legitimacy rupture plus security-force fragmentation or an armed movement gaining sanctuary; current firebreaks make this unlikely. External mission exposure may persist if Great Lakes insecurity worsens and deployments become more combat-like.

Timeframe and definition Horizon: next three years. Significant armed conflict means sustained internal armed conflict (insurgency/civil war) or interstate war involving Malawian territory or forces in major combat, not ordinary crime, riots, or episodic protest violence.

Threat drivers Socioeconomic stress remains the dominant pressure. Worsening food insecurity and macro-fiscal constraints increase the likelihood of demonstrations, road blockades, and clashes with police around prices, services, and aid distribution. Political risk has edged up: reporting on politically motivated violence, arrests, and uneven enforcement against perpetrators points to a more coercive post-election environment that can produce lethal incidents and tit-for-tat street violence.

External exposure is the clearest route to “direct involvement.” Malawi’s defence force is small but participates in peace support; a deployment of roughly battalion size to the DRC increases the chance of Malawian casualties if local fighting intensifies or mandates harden. A separate, lower-probability pathway is regional security cooperation with Mozambique; however, Malawi is not a primary theater for Cabo Delgado-style militancy, and spillover would more likely manifest as refugee flows and crime than sustained insurgency.

Resilience and systemic firebreaks Pre-mortem (peace holds): Malawi has low interstate threat salience, limited strategic value as a battlefield, and geography that reduces direct spillover from major war zones. The security sector is generally cohesive and resource-constrained, limiting both coup-scale adventurism and the feasibility of sustained internal war. Courts, civil society, and donor leverage provide partial constraints and off-ramps even when governance quality deteriorates.

Net assessment New evidence modestly increases concern about political coercion and external deployment exposure, but still does not indicate an emerging insurgency, durable communal militias, or security-force fragmentation. Update risk slightly upward to 0.16 (Kent: unlikely).