Malawi–Zambia border

A line along a watershed

Except for short stretches, the border follows drainage divides. It runs south from the Tanzania tripoint on Nankungulu hill to the Mozambique tripoint on the 14th parallel south. East of the line, rivers flow into Lake Malawi (called Lake Nyasa in the old documents). West of it, they are tributaries of the Zambezi.^[1] A drainage divide, or watershed, is the high ground that separates two river systems.

Sources give different lengths. In 1974 the US State Department's Geographer put the boundary at about 520 miles (about 840 km).^[1] The Sovereign Limits boundary database gives 976 km.^[4]

Drawn between two British territories

The line began as an internal border between two British territories.^[4] In 1888 the land later known as Northern Rhodesia was proclaimed a British sphere of influence. The next year Britain declared a protectorate to the east, over the Makololo, Yao and Machinga lands around Lake Nyasa.^[1]

A Foreign Office paper of 13 February 1891 let the British South Africa Company operate north of the Zambezi, but specifically left Nyasaland out, behind a defined western limit.^[1] On 14 May 1891 a second Foreign Office paper declared a British protectorate over the Nyasaland Districts. It gave the same western limit, and that limit is today's Malawi–Zambia border.^[1]

The notification did not describe hills and rivers directly. It borrowed two lines from the Berlin Act of 1885: the edge of the Conventional Free Trade Zone, and the edge of the geographical Congo Basin.^[1] The Berlin Act described the first as following “the watershed between the affluents of Lakes Nyassa and those of the Zambesi”.^[1]

“…to the west by a frontier which, starting on the south from the point where the boundary of the Portuguese Dominions is intersected by the boundary of the Conventional Free Trade Zone defined in the 1st Article of the Berlin Act, follows that line northwards to the point where it meets the line of the geographical Congo Basin…”^[1]

Fixing the two ends

The northern end was settled with Germany, which then held what is now mainland Tanzania. An Anglo-German protocol of 11 November 1898 agreed that Nankungulu hill lay on the Congo basin watershed, so Nyasaland's western limit ended there.^[1] A 1901 Anglo-German agreement said Nankungulu was marked by pillar No. 2. By 1974 a number of maps showed the tripoint at pillar No. 588, from a later demarcation.^[1]

The southern end came from Britain's treaty with Portugal, signed on 11 June 1891. It ended the northward run of the British–Portuguese boundary along the Lake Nyasa–Zambezi divide at the 14th parallel.^[1] An Anglo-Portuguese commission marked that point with pillar No. 38 in 1904, and the two governments approved the work in 1911.^[1] Pillar No. 38 is the Malawi–Mozambique–Zambia tripoint.^[1]

Independence, and a line never fully surveyed

Nyasaland was renamed the British Central African Protectorate in 1893, and became the Nyasaland Protectorate again in 1907.^[1] West of it, the British South Africa Company's territory was organised as Northern Rhodesia in 1911 and passed to the British Colonial Office in 1924.^[1] From 1953 to 1963 both belonged to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, with Southern Rhodesia.^[1] Nyasaland became independent as Malawi on 6 July 1964, and Northern Rhodesia as Zambia on 24 October 1964.^[1]

In 1974 the US Geographer reported that no boundary commission had ever surveyed the whole line. A 1927 survey of the North Concession covered 130 miles of it, and its alignment apparently matched Zambia’s reading of the border. That survey was never ratified, and maps showed the drainage divide as the de facto line.^[1] Pillars from a 1934–35 estate survey stood at the far northern end.^[1]

After independence the two countries set up a Joint Survey Commission, and Sovereign Limits reports that bilateral demarcation was completed in 2011, with the commission still active.^[4] In February 2025, though, a joint team of Zambian and Malawian surveyors began work on about 780 km of the line, on top of 200 km worked on earlier.^[5] Zambia’s Assistant Surveyor General said beacons put up in 2012 had not stopped encroachment, and that a “give-and-take” approach would be used because people live on both sides.^[5] The local district commissioner in Lundazi, Zambia, said the unclear line had led to arrests and killings, and even to livestock being seized for grazing on the Malawian side.^[5]

The Mchinji–Mwami crossing

The main crossing is Mchinji on the Malawian side and Mwami on the Zambian side. SADC calls it a vital junction on the North-South Corridor.^[2][3] Construction of a one-stop border post began in September 2018, financed by the African Development Bank at US$7.5 million.^[6] At a one-stop border post, both countries’ officials handle travellers and goods in one place, so they stop once instead of twice.

Presidents Lazarus Chakwera of Malawi and Hakainde Hichilema of Zambia commissioned it on 7 December 2022.^[3] SADC describes it as working on a “juxtapose” model.^[2]