author
Duff Macdonald
1850–1929
A Scottish missionary in Central Africa, he wrote vivid accounts of life around Lake Nyasa that blend travel, observation, and missionary history. His best-known work, Africana, remains a window into 19th-century Malawi and neighboring regions.
2 Audiobooks
About the author
Born in 1850, Duff Macdonald was a Scottish Church of Scotland missionary who studied at Aberdeen University and was ordained in 1877. He became one of the early missionaries sent to Central Africa, where his work was tied to the Blantyre mission in what is now Malawi.
Although his time on the mission field was relatively brief and difficult, it proved historically important. Accounts of his career describe him as the first ordained Church of Scotland missionary in central Africa, and his work helped lay groundwork for a Presbyterian mission that would later have a lasting influence in southern Malawi.
Macdonald is best remembered as the author of Africana; or, The Heart of Heathen Africa, a two-volume work drawn from close observation of local customs, beliefs, and mission life. The books combine ethnographic detail, travel writing, and missionary narrative, and they are still of interest to readers studying African history, religion, and colonial-era encounters.