49 Fun Facts About Malawi

Which city is the capital of Malawi?

Lilongwe was picked in 1965 as a growth point for the centre and north of the country, and ten years later it took over as capital from a city in the south.

Which city was the colonial capital and then independent Malawi's first capital until the mid-1970s?

Zomba kept Malawi's parliament until 1994, almost two decades after the rest of the government had moved away.

Malawi's commercial capital, Blantyre, was named after the Scottish birthplace of which explorer?

David Livingstone was born in the Scottish mill town of Blantyre, and Church of Scotland missionaries gave its name to the mission they founded here in 1876, three years after his death.

What is the name Malawi usually said to mean?

Flames is the usual translation, and one tradition says the great lake shimmered like fire when the first settlers looked down on it from the highlands.

By what affectionate nickname is Malawi widely known?

The Warm Heart of Africa is about the people rather than the weather: the nickname credits Malawians' reputation for friendliness to strangers.

Lake Malawi holds what world record among lakes?

More fish species than any other lake live here, most of them cichlids that evolved in the lake itself and are found nowhere else on Earth.

Why is Lake Malawi nicknamed the 'Calendar Lake'?

It measures about 365 miles by 52 in the popular telling, a mile for each day and week of the year, though surveys make the lake a little shorter and narrower.

Which river flows out of the southern end of Lake Malawi to join the Zambezi?

The Shire is the lake's only outlet, and the falls along its middle course drive the power stations that supply most of Malawi's hydroelectricity.

Sapitwa, Malawi's highest peak at about 3,000 metres, crowns which great massif in the south?

Mount Mulanje stands alone because its hard igneous rock has resisted erosion while the land around it wore down into plains.

Likoma and Chizumulu islands are exclaves of Malawi entirely surrounded by which country's waters?

Mozambique's waters surround both islands, but they stayed Malawian because British missionaries had made Likoma their headquarters in the 1880s, before the border was drawn.

Which is Malawi's largest national park, covering a plateau in the north?

Nyika's plateau is so high that it is often wrapped in cloud, and the constant moisture brings more than 200 kinds of orchid into flower on its open grassland.

Which Bantu kingdom flourished between Lake Malawi and the Zambezi from about the 16th century?

Maravi power peaked around 1700, when its rulers held much of today's Malawi and parts of two neighbouring countries, before slave raiding and invasion broke it apart.

In 2016 and 2017, about 500 of which animals were trucked across Malawi to restock Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve?

Elephants had been greatly reduced at Nkhotakota by poaching, so herds were moved in from Liwonde and Majete in the south; Prince Harry worked with the capture teams.

After seeing fishermen's lanterns at night, an explorer named Lake Malawi the Lake of what?

Stars: the Lake of Stars was his name for the night-time scene, and it now belongs to a music festival first held on the lake's shore in 2004.

Under what name was Malawi a British protectorate from 1907 until independence?

Nyasaland offered settlers cheap land for plantations while a hut tax pushed Africans to work on them for months each year, a grievance that fed an armed rising in 1915.

From 1953 to 1963, which two territories shared a British-made federation with the future Malawi?

Northern and Southern Rhodesia are now Zambia and Zimbabwe; African nationalists opposed the union from the start, and it was dissolved after only ten years.

Two years to the day after independence, on 6 July 1966, what did Malawi become?

A republic replaced the arrangement in which Queen Elizabeth II had stayed on as head of state, which is why 6 July is both Independence Day and Republic Day.

Under Hastings Banda's strict dress code, which everyday garment were women in Malawi forbidden to wear?

Trousers stayed illegal for Malawian women until 1994; the same code banned skirts above the knee, except at holiday resorts out of public view.

Which title was Hastings Banda given in 1971?

President for life proved a promise he could not keep: a 1993 referendum ended one-party rule, and he lost the multi-party election held the following year.

Who won Malawi's first multi-party presidential election in 1994, ending three decades of one-man rule?

Bakili Muluzi, once a minister under the old regime, won with 47 percent of the vote and at once freed political prisoners and restored freedom of speech.

Who became Malawi's president in 2012 after the death of Bingu wa Mutharika?

Joyce Banda was vice-president but had been expelled from the ruling party, and its leaders kept the death quiet for two days before she was finally sworn in.

Which opposition leader won Malawi's 2020 presidential election?

Lazarus Chakwera, a preacher turned politician, took 59 percent in a re-run that the courts ordered after annulling the 2019 vote; voters turned him out again in 2025.

Which celebrity founded the charity Raising Malawi in 2006 and went on to adopt children from the country?

Madonna's second adoption was at first refused by a Malawian court because she did not live in the country, a ruling that was overturned on appeal.

What is the currency of Malawi?

Kwacha means 'it has dawned', and the coin it divides into, the tambala, means 'rooster', on the idea that a hundred roosters announce the dawn.

What symbol sits at the centre of the black stripe on Malawi's flag?

A red rising sun stands for the dawn of hope and freedom; in 2010 the government swapped it for a full white sun amid controversy, and the old flag came back in 2012.

Which Bantu language, also known as Nyanja, is the most widely spoken in Malawi?

Chichewa got its present name in 1968, when the country's first president insisted that the language long called Chinyanja be renamed.

Nsima, Malawi's staple food, is usually made from what?

Ground maize makes the stiff porridge eaten with almost every meal, yet maize only reached Africa from the Americas in the 1500s and 1600s; before that the staples were sorghum and millet.

Chambo, a prized eating fish of Lake Malawi, belongs to which familiar group of fish?

Tilapia known as chambo have long been a mainstay of the lake's fishery, but overfishing has cut their numbers so sharply that one chambo species may already be extinct.

Which crop is Malawi's biggest export earner?

Tobacco brings in so much of Malawi's foreign exchange that the country has been called the world's most tobacco-dependent economy; its burley leaf goes into cigarette blends worldwide.

In 2019 Malawi became the first country in the world to give children a new vaccine against which disease?

Malaria kills a child somewhere every two minutes, most of them in Africa, so the vaccine went first to Malawian under-twos in a pilot that two other African countries joined within months.

Which single church has the most members in Malawi?

The Roman Catholic Church was the largest single church in the 2018 census, with about a sixth of Malawians, though Protestants of all churches together were about twice as numerous.

What did Malawian teenager William Kamkwamba build from scrap during a famine, later inspiring a book and a film?

A wind turbine of blue gum poles, bicycle parts and scrapyard finds, copied from a diagram in a library book, lit four bulbs and ran two radios in his family's home.

The masked 'Great Dance' called Gule Wamkulu is performed by which secret society of central Malawi?

Nyau members dance at funerals and initiations in masks and full-body costumes of wood, straw and cloth, and while masked they are treated as animals or spirits of the dead.

In which sport has Malawi's national team, the Queens, ranked among the world's top six?

Netball is where Malawi takes on the sport's powers: at the 2018 Commonwealth Games the Queens beat New Zealand, who had played in every final since the sport joined the Games.

Malawi's 2019 presidential vote was annulled after which office product turned up on tally sheets?

Correction fluid gave the affair its nickname, the 'Tipp-Ex election'; judges threw out the result in February 2020 and ordered a fresh vote.

Landlocked Malawi still has a small navy, which patrols Lake Malawi from which lakeshore base?

Monkey Bay is also where the lake ferry Ilala has set out on its weekly run since 1951, so the navy's few patrol boats share a harbour with the lake's best-known ship.

Lake Malawi is the southernmost of the lakes strung along which geological feature of eastern Africa?

The Great Rift Valley is where Africa is slowly pulling apart, which is why the lake is so long, narrow and deep: about 700 metres, so its floor lies well below sea level.

What was the profession of John Chilembwe, who led a 1915 rising against British rule and is honoured each January?

A Baptist minister trained in the United States, he rose against the treatment of African estate workers and wartime conscription, and was shot dead within days.

Which 2023 storm, the longest-lasting tropical cyclone ever recorded, killed more than 1,000 people in southern Malawi?

Cyclone Freddy lasted 36 days, crossed the whole Indian Ocean and struck the African mainland twice; its rains set off flash floods and landslides that hit Blantyre especially hard.

Which diplomat did President Bingu wa Mutharika expel from Malawi in 2011 over a leaked cable that called him autocratic?

Britain's high commissioner was sent home, London expelled Malawi's envoy in return, and within months the British government halted its aid.

What did Malawi's first multi-party government make free for every child in 1994?

Primary schooling became free in 1994 and enrolment jumped; going on to secondary school has stayed far less common.

The 1890 British Ultimatum that opened the way to a Malawi protectorate was directed at which country?

Portugal gave way, and the humiliation fed the republican movement that toppled its monarchy in 1910; a song written in protest at the ultimatum became the national anthem.

The Ngoni, who settled in Malawi in the 1800s, had fled north from wars set off by the rise of which kingdom?

The Zulu kingdom's wars scattered its neighbours across southern Africa; the Ngoni crossed the Zambezi in 1835 and used the same regimental tactics to win land in what is now Malawi.

Which three countries border landlocked Malawi?

Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique leave Malawi with no coast of its own, so its goods must cross a neighbour to reach the sea, some by a railway that runs to a port on the Indian Ocean.

Before it was renamed in 1907, under what name did Britain rule the territory that is now Malawi?

The British Central Africa Protectorate grew out of the work of a consul, Harry Johnston, sent to sign treaties with local rulers before a rival European power could claim the land.

In which country was Hastings Banda working as a doctor before returning home in 1958?

Ghana, then still the Gold Coast, was where Banda had moved his medical practice from London in the early 1950s; he came home in 1958 after about 42 years away.

Which country's loan built the national stadium that opened in Malawi's capital in 2017?

China lent about $70 million for it, after Malawi had dropped its ties with Taiwan and recognised Beijing instead.

Malawi blends which locally made fuel into its petrol?

Ethanol distilled from Malawi's own sugar cane is mixed into petrol to cut the import bill of a country that produces no oil of its own.

Lake Malawi's brightly coloured mbuna are sold around the world to stock what?

Home aquariums for mbuna copy the lake itself: these cichlids live among the rocks of its shores, so keepers fill much of the tank with piled stone.