The beginning of the capital

The name Lilongwe comes from the river that cuts through the capital and the word comes from the language of the Nyanja people. Already in the 9th century, Bantu tribes settled in present-day Malawi, and centuries before the European colonization of the country, a smaller fishing village had emerged on the winding lakes of the Lilongwe River, and relatively few people lived here compared to today’s growing capital. Elsewhere in the lush country, there were settlements; as there had been through thousands of years.

The arrival of Europeans

Today is Lilongwe Malawi’s capital, but it was southern Malawi that was the focus of most of the development in the country’s early colonial history.

In 1876, the town of Blantyre was founded and named after a town in Scotland from which the missionaries who established themselves in today’s Malawi came. In addition, Blantyre in Scotland was the city in which David Livingstone was born. The new Blantyre gained higher British status in 1883, and in 1895 the city gained the status of an actual market town, making it the oldest modern city in Malawi.

By 1891, the British had also come to the area of ​​Lake Malawi and colonized it under the name British Central Africa Protectorate. It was still not the center of Lilongwe, as the British expanded its governance and economic center in Blantyre to the south. One of the major commodities through Blantyre at that time was ivory.

Twentieth century expansion

In the first decades of the 20th century, only a few thousand inhabitants lived in Lilongwe, while Blantyre, on the other hand, grew rapidly. However, that would soon change for Lilongwe due to various factors.

Most important of all was Lilongwe’s location. It was located on the intersection of Lusaka and Lake Nyasa (now Lake Malawi) in an east-west direction and between the country’s then two most important cities, Mzuzu and Blantyre to the north and south respectively. It was also possible to navigate the waterway to Lake Nyasa, and the area was also good for the important tobacco cultivation.

It was thus a small but strategically well-chosen city, which the British, after a few decades, chose to put in their colony administration when they chose Lilongwe. It had until the 1930s became a few thousand inhabitants.

The independence

The decades of the mid-20th century stood for signs of independence in the British colony called Nyasaland. One of the key people on the path to freedom was Dr. Hastings Banda, who after a few years abroad returned to Nyasaland and became politically active with the goal of making the country independent of British rule.

Banda was appointed prime minister on February 1, 1963, and three years later he was able to take office as president of the Republic of Malawi; a position he contested for 1994, whereby his policy came to define the foundations of the new country.

From independence to present-day

Malawi became an independent country in 1966, and since then the development has gone strong with Lilongwe’s population. In 1977, there were still less than 100,000 people living here, and that is a figure that has doubled in three decades thereafter.

Population growth is not least due to the urbanization seen all over the world. In Malawi too, the younger generations are affected by fewer economic, job and educational opportunities in rural areas, and this increases the migration to the capital, which has also benefited from, for example, South African investments and the development of the tobacco industry.

Among the newer investments in the cityscape is the large new parliament, whose buildings were inaugurated in 2010 after just one year of construction.

Lilongwe is Malawi’s capital, political center, while one of the country’s major economic engines is the city of Blantyre to the south of the country. Blantyre is historically the most significant in Malawi, and thus there are some institutions located here rather than in the capital. This applies, for example, to the Supreme Court, polytechnic and the country’s home ground at international football matches, which are also located in Blantyre.

There are thus two centers in the country today. Both Blantyre and Lilongwe, both experiencing population growth and economic development. As a political capital, Lilongwe’s development is steady, while Blantyre, with the country’s largest white population among others, remains the locomotive of much trade, production and education.