Levy Patrick Mwanawasa was born in Mufulira on 3 September 1948, the second of ten children in a Copperbelt family. He took his law degree from the University of Zambia, passed the bar, and practiced privately from 1974 onward. In 1978 he opened his own firm, Mwanawasa and Company. He served briefly as Solicitor General in 1985 and returned to private practice a year later. The defining case of his legal career came in 1989, when he led the defense team for Lieutenant General Christon Tembo, accused by Kenneth Kaunda's government of treason. Tembo faced the death penalty. Mwanawasa won the case. His reputation among Kaunda's political opponents grew sharply. When Frederick Chiluba ousted Kaunda in the 1991 multiparty election, Chiluba appointed Mwanawasa as vice-president in November of that year.

On 8 December 1991, only weeks into his vice-presidency, Mwanawasa was involved in a traffic accident in which his aide died on the spot. He suffered multiple serious injuries, was airlifted to Johannesburg, and spent three months recovering. The permanent effect was neurological: a noticeable slur in his speech that he carried for the rest of his life. A government inquiry was set up to examine whether the crash had been an assassination attempt. No conclusive finding was ever published. What remained was the slur, which opponents would weaponize for years. He resigned as vice-president in 1994, returned to private life, and then, eight years later, ran for the presidency himself. The opposition called him a cabbage and meant it cruelly. Mwanawasa answered them by winning.

Mwanawasa took office in January 2002. The election had been flawed; the Supreme Court acknowledged as much in 2005, but ruled that the irregularities had not changed the outcome. What Mwanawasa did with the presidency was harder to dispute. He launched the most serious anti-corruption campaign in Zambian history up to that point, prosecuting former officials including members of his predecessor Chiluba's inner circle. Foreign investment rose. Debt relief flowed in. The IMF was pleased; the World Bank was pleased; critics at home accused him of being too close to foreign creditors, though the aid was real and the results were visible. In January 2005 he did something Zambian presidents rarely do: he apologised to the nation for failing to reduce poverty. Seventy-five percent of Zambians, he acknowledged, still lived on less than a dollar a day.

Mwanawasa stood out among southern African leaders by being willing to criticise Robert Mugabe publicly while Mugabe was still in power in Zimbabwe. Others stayed silent; Mwanawasa did not. When he died, Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was among the first to publicly grieve. Mwanawasa suffered a mild stroke in April 2006 and a more serious one in June 2008, while attending an African Union summit in Sharm el-Sheikh. He was evacuated by air ambulance to the Percy Military Hospital near Paris. He died there on 19 August 2008, at age 59. He was the first sitting president of Zambia to die in office. His burial was set for 3 September, which would have been his 60th birthday. Fourteen African heads of state attended. Robert Mugabe, whom he had criticised so often, came too, and called him a very courageous leader. His widow Maureen spoke at the funeral, saying: typical of you, you died on duty. You died a sad man as no one seemed to appreciate your sacrifices. Had you been with us today, I am sure these accolades could have made you happy.