Joyce Hilda Banda (1950–) was the fourth president of the state of Malawi and the second woman to hold the executive office in that nation (after Queen Elizabeth II, who ruled Malawi while it was a British colony). Banda was also only the second female head of state in all of Africa. She came into office when the previous president, Bingu wa Mutharika, died suddenly in 2012; Banda, as his vice president, assumed the office and held it until the next presidential elections in the spring of 2014.