Flights from USA to Africa

I will be traveling to Malawi next summer. My research so far has
only found very expensive tickets from DFW (home base) to Lilongwe,
but component parts of the journey are not necessarily as expensive.

For example, I can fly (round trip) to LHR for $1380 and from LHR to
LLW (Lilongwe) with connections through Kenya Airways for $1361 a
total of about 2740.

I can't get anywhere near this price by booking the whole trip. Can
an agent get these same flights/prices and make them connect (which
should be to my advantage if a flight is late or cancelled)?

Any tips for booking air travel in Africa would be appreciated as my
daughter is going to be there for a while.

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...
I will be traveling to Malawi next summer. My research so far has
only found very expensive tickets from DFW (home base) to Lilongwe,
but component parts of the journey are not necessarily as expensive.

For example, I can fly (round trip) to LHR for $1380 and from LHR to
LLW (Lilongwe) with connections through Kenya Airways for $1361 a
total of about 2740.

I can't get anywhere near this price by booking the whole trip. Can
an agent get these same flights/prices and make them connect (which
should be to my advantage if a flight is late or cancelled)?

Any tips for booking air travel in Africa would be appreciated as my
daughter is going to be there for a while.

As far as the 2nd question is concerned I think you'll find that the market
in Africa for airline tickets isn't quite the same as in the USA and Europe.
Still rather a lot of bricks and mortar (or the local equivalent).

When it comes to getting there Europe is almost certainly the way to go;
there are a few flights from the US to East and South Africa (Johannesburg
and Lagos come to mind) and North Africa (Casablanca and Cairo) but I'm not
convinced they help.

You obviously appreciate the risk involved in buying separate tickets. You
could benefit from that by spending a night (at least) at the changeover
point. To find a reasonable thru fare the Saturday travel supplement of a
big city paper (if you can get it, the New York Times) and the telephone is
probably the way to go.