Why Malawi moved its capital to Lilongwe

Zomba, the colonial capital

Zomba lies on the slopes of Zomba Mountain in the Shire Highlands of southern Malawi. Founded in 1885 as a planters’ settlement, it became from 1891 the seat of the British Central African Protectorate, later Nyasaland, and stayed the capital of independent Malawi until 1975. Parliament met in its 1957 Parliament Building until 1994.^[1]

A growth point in the centre

Lilongwe, named after a nearby river, became a colonial district headquarters in 1904. A tobacco industry grew up around it from the 1920s, and its place where several main roads meet made it a market centre for the fertile Central Region Plateau. In 1965 President Hastings Kamuzu Banda chose it as an economic growth point for northern and central Malawi, and work on a new national capital began in 1968.^[2]

Lilongwe took over from Zomba as capital in 1975.^[2][3] Zomba became mainly a university town, home to Chancellor College, founded in 1974.^[1]

Two centres

The capital was built as two centres 5 km apart: the old town, a service and distribution hub, and Capital Hill, with the government buildings and embassies. The judiciary stayed in Blantyre.^[2] The city was zoned into four sectors, Old Town, Capital Hill, Kanengo and Lumbadzi. Its population grew fast in the 1970s and 1980s and reached 989,318 at the 2018 census, nearly ten times what it was 40 years earlier.^[3]