Lilongwe From Home

A Brief History of Lilongwe

2012-02-12T13:56:00.000-08:00

My Lilongwe Map: http://worldmap.harvard.edu/maps/1287

Wheredoes the name “Lilongwe” come from?

“Lilongwe”is the name the Nyanja ethnicity gives to the river running east-west throughcentral Malawi. Lilongwe began as a small fishing village on the banks of thisriver. It is notable that water is central to place names in Malawi, which isitself named in conjunction with Lake Malawi, the country’s dominantgeographical feature. When Lake Malawi was called Lake Nyasa, Malawi was calledNyasaland. It is also notable that the British kept the indigenous place name,unlike other instances where they renamed towns such as Livingstone, Zambia.

Whatare the origins of Lilongwe?

Lilongwe existed forcenturies before first contact from Europeans as a small fishing village.During the British colonial period, it became a major administrative center inthe region due to its desirable geography. Following is a contemporary map ofLilongwe city centre is the approximate site of the British administrativearea:

A 1930 Frenchcolonial map labels the Lilongwe river, but not the town itself. During this time, Lilongwe's population was at most only a few thousand.

Whywas Lilongwe’s location so desirable?

•1) It was theintersection of two important roads, the east-west road connecting Lusaka,Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) to Lake Nyasa (now Lake Malawi) and thenorth-south road connecting Mzuzu and Blantyre, then Malawi’s two most important cities.

•2) It was on anavigable water route to Lake Malawi, but had a better climate for growingtobacco than areas closer to the lake.

Lilongwesince independence:

•Since Malawi achievedindependence from the United Kingdom, Lilongwe’s progress has been primarilymarked by two related trends:

•1) Rapid populationgrowth.

•2) Graduallyreplacing Blantyre as Malawi’s economic capital.

Lilongwe’spopulation explosionin the last 35 years

1977 98,700

1987 223,300

1998 435,900

2008 866,200

2009 902,400

Whataccounts for this rapid growth?

•1) A lack of economicopportunity for young people in rural Malawi drives many to urban areas lookingfor employment.

•2) Malawi has becomepopular with South African expatriates for its climate, low cost of living, andrelative freedom from racial violence or political instability.

•3) Malawi’s emergenceas a major tobacco exporter.

•4) International aidorganization and NGOs, which are heavily involved in Malawi, are most often runout of Lilongwe.

Literature on Lilongwe:

•CapitalRelocation in Africa: The Case of Lilongwe in Malawi

•DeborahPotts

•TheGeographical Journal,Vol. 151, No. 2 (Jul., 1985), pp

•http://www.jstor.org/stable/633532?&Search=yes&searchText=lilongwe&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dlilongwe%26acc%3Don%26wc%3Don&prevSearch=&item=1&ttl=720&returnArticleService=showFullText

•TheHistorical Development of Market-Places and Changes in Their Spatio-TemporalIntegration in Malaŵi

•PerA. Lindskog

•Geografiska Annaler.Series B, Human Geography,Vol. 64, No. 1 (1982), pp. 61-6

•http://www.jstor.org/stable/490909?&Search=yes&searchText=lilongwe&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dlilongwe%26acc%3Don%26wc%3Don&prevSearch=&item=6&ttl=720&returnArticleService=showFullText

•Malawi:addicted to the leaf

•PDavies

•TobaccoControl, Vol. 12, No. 1(March 2003), pp. 91-93

•http://www.jstor.org/stable/20747626?&Search=yes&searchText=lilongwe&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dlilongwe%26acc%3Don%26wc%3Don&prevSearch=&item=11&ttl=720&returnArticleService=showFullText

•

•TheVillagein the City, the City in the Village: Migrants in Lilongwe

HarriEnglund

•Journalof Southern African Studies, Vol. 28, No. 1, Special Issue: Malawi (Mar., 2002),pp. 137-

•ttp://www.jstor.org/stable/823370?&Search=yes&searchText=lilongwe&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dlilongwe%26acc%3Don%26wc%3Don&prevSearch=&item=2&ttl=720&returnArticleService=showFullText

•

•TheStatus and Context of Change in Mathematics Education in Malawi

•WillyMwakapenda

•EducationalStudies in Mathematics,Vol. 49, No. 2 (2002), pp. 251-

•http://www.jstor.org/stable/3483077?&Search=yes&searchText=lilongwe&searchText=malawi&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dlilongwe%2Bmalawi%2B%26gw%3Djtx%26acc%3Don%26prq%3Dlilongwe%26Search%3DSearch%26hp%3D25%26wc%3Don&prevSearch=&item=2&ttl=640&returnArticleService=showFullText

•

•TacklingMalawi's Human Resources Crisis

•DebbiePalmer

•ReproductiveHealth Matters,Vol. 14, No. 27, Human Resources for Sexual and Reproductive Health Care (May,2006), pp. 27-39

•http://www.jstor.org/stable/3775847?&Search=yes&searchText=lilongwe&searchText=malawi&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dlilongwe%2Bmalawi%2B%26gw%3Djtx%26acc%3Don%26prq%3Dlilongwe%26Search%3DSearch%26hp%3D25%26wc%3Don&prevSearch=&item=9&ttl=640&returnArticleService=showFullText

•HumanRights,Environment, and Development: The Dispossession of Fishing Communities on LakeMalawi

•BillDerman, AnneFerguson

•HumanEcology, Vol. 23, No. 2(Jun., 1995), pp. 125-14

•http://www.jstor.org/stable/4603162?&Search=yes&searchText=lilongwe&searchText=malawi&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dlilongwe%2Bmalawi%2B%26gw%3Djtx%26acc%3Don%26prq%3Dlilongwe%26Search%3DSearch%26hp%3D25%26wc%3Don&prevSearch=&item=4&ttl=640&returnArticleService=showFullText

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•DemographicResponse to Environmental Pressure in Malawi

•EzekielKalipeni

•Populationand Environment,Vol. 17, No. 4 (Mar., 1996), pp. 285-3

•http://www.jstor.org/stable/27503472?&Search=yes&searchText=lilongwe&searchText=malawi&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dlilongwe%2Bmalawi%2B%26gw%3Djtx%26acc%3Don%26prq%3Dlilongwe%26Search%3DSearch%26hp%3D25%26wc%3Don&prevSearch=&item=18&ttl=640&returnArticleService=showFullText

•Information Research Center,Embassy of the United Statess, Lilongwe, Malawi.

•http://lilongwe.usembassy.gov/irc.html

•BBC News Africa

•http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa

•Commonwealth Network,Lilongwe, Malawi

•http://www.commonwealth-of-nations.org/Malawi/Municipal/Lilongwe_City_Assembly/welcome

•The Lilongwe river iscentral to Lilongwe’s geography and social hierarchy. One of the only sites inthe area where the river bends so sharply that a lot can be bounded by water ontwo sides is, not coincidentally, the Presidential Complex. Immediately besidethis, also along the river, is one of Lilongwe’s highest income neighborhoods.

Fun with Google Earth

2012-02-05T11:25:00.000-08:00

A closer look at Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi. Includes Google Earth images, historic maps, aerial views of affluent and slum areas, breakdown of malaria distribution, land use, major waterway, social conflict sites, and ethnic identity.

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Google Roadmap view of Lilongwe, with City Centre highlighted.

Google Satellite view of Lilongwe, with City Centre highlighted.

Google Terrain view of Lilongwe, with City Centre highlighted.

Google Hybrid view of Lilongwe, with City Centre highlighted.

Lilongwe as seen form Open Street View, with City Centre highlighted.

A 1770 map begins to approximate the Malawi area. At the time, Lilongwe was a tiny village and Malawi was nearly 200 years away from existence as an independent state. However, Maravi, the site of an ancient civilization in modern-day Malawi, is included, as is what is now Lake Malawi.

A map from 1675 shows the approximate location of Malawi, but makes no mention of Lilongwe, Malawi, or Lake Malawi.

Malaria distribution in Lilongwe is uniformly high, due in large part to its proximity to Lake Malawi.

Malaria distribution in southeastern Africa. Malawi is highlighted.

Lilongwe City Centre, the oldest, wealthiest, and most developed neighborhood of the town. Note the large, modern, multistory buildings (many of which are embassies), abundant green space, and paved, orderly streets.

Unnamed slum neighborhood between Chimutu and Kabwabwa. Note the haphazard placement of buildings and apparent lack of urban planing, the unpaved roads, prevalence of one-room buildings, and prevalence of tin roofs.

Lilongwe City Centre and its boundaries: Kenyatta Road, Presidential Way (which leads to the Presidential Complex further east), Youth Drive, and the Lilongwe river.

This map shows the relative ethnic homogeneity of Lilongwe. In all parts of the city, the Nyanja are the predominant ethnic group.

This map indicates the major waterways of the Lilongwe area. Note that Lilongwe City Centre, the oldest portion of the city, is the site of the confluence of two rivers.

1998-2008 land use. The grey area indicates urban Lilongwe. No legend is given, but I believe grey represents heavily urban use, purple and lavender indicate dry grasslands or desert, yellow and brown indicate highland areas, and green indicates forested areas.

Each red dot shows the location of an incident of social conflict. (Social Conflict in Africa Database)

Comparisons of ethnicity, population density, and transportation infrastructure in four African countries

2012-01-29T11:33:00.000-08:00

For this assignment, I have examined the similarities and differences between four African states based on three metrics: Ethnicity, Population Density, and Number and Location of Airports (a measure related to utilities and transportation). The fours states, and the regions they represent are Cameroon (West Africa), Malawi (Southern Africa), Somalia (East Africa), and Egypt (North Africa). The links to the screenshots from AfricaMap via Jing are listed below each discussion. I could not figure out how to get the images themselves to appear here.

Looking at the Ethnicity Felix 2001 map, the most striking similarity between the four countries is that none are ethnically homogeneous. Somalia has the fewest unique ethnic regional majorities at seven, Egypt is next with twelve, and Cameroon and Malawi both have more than twenty. A second important similarity is that in each state, national boundaries seem to have been made with little consideration for ethnic boundaries, and in all four cases at least one ethnicity's region is spliced into two or more countries. This combination of a high degree of ethnic diversity and superimposed national borders is doubtless a source of ongoing sociopolitical tension in many cases.

There are however, certain important differences between the four states with regard to ethnicity. In both Egypt and Somalia, there are a significantly smaller number of individual ethnic enclaves than in Cameroon and Malawi. Further, in both Egypt and Somalia, the regions that are most densely populated (The Mediterranean coast and Nile region in Egypt, and Mogadishu and the Indian coast in Somalia) are comparatively ethnically homogenized, each dominated by no more than two ethnic groups. In contrast, Malawi's most densely populated area (the region surrounding the capital of Lilongwe and the commercial hub of Blantyre) has areas with ten different ethnic majorities. In Cameroon, while both the capital of Yaounde and the commercial hub of Douala have a single majority ethnicity, the densely populated Southern region more generally has dozens of distinct ethnic groups.

http://screencast.com/t/ZDg3NzM3Nm (Cameroon ethno-linguistic groups)
http://screencast.com/t/HxmKdjxYVL2C (Malawi ethno-linguistic groups)
http://screencast.com/t/XALjeoeDM (Somalia ethnolinguistic groups)
http://screencast.com/t/1C4y72Vz40 (Egypt ethno-linguistic groups)

Each of the four states shows different patterns of population density and geographical distribution, though certain shared patterns emerge after further review. In Cameroon the most densely populated region is the southwestern quadrant, near the Atlantic coast and the Nigerian border. The commercial center of Douala is in this region, and the capital of Yaounde is relatively close. The vast east and central portions of the country are sparsely populated, though the far north contains a second area of relatively dense concentration that spreads into Nigeria and Chad. Malawi is generally densely populated, with the southern portion of the country (containing Lilongwe and Blantyre) being most dense. Generally the eastern portion of the country, bordering Lake Malawi, is more densely populated than the west or far north. Somalia is generally very sparsely populated, though the regions near the capital of Mogadishu and the southern Indian coast are more densely populated than the north and inland areas. Egypt's populated is extremely dense along the Mediterranean coast and along the Nile, but extremely sparse nearly everywhere else. In general, the most important factor in determining the geographical distribution of population appears to be access to water. Proximity to colonial capitals and historic centers of trade appears to be the second most important component.

http://screencast.com/t/JuJ7oOEny6 (Cameroon population density)
http://screencast.com/t/hjnMAPGuJn5 (Malawi population density)
http://screencast.com/t/vTZ4JGRopfZA (Somalia population density)
http://screencast.com/t/L5FB0NdCxt (Egypt population density)

Cameroon has ten airports, including two each in Yaounde and Douala, and another four in the southwest. The sparsely populated inland eastern portion of the country in the only region where citizens would be more than 150 to 200 miles from an airport. Malawi has six airports, including two in Lilongwe, one in Blantyre, and three in important regional capitals. The airports are relatively evenly spaced throughout the geographically small country. There are seven airports in Somalia, including two in Mogadishu, three others in the southern portion of the country, and two in the far north. The vast center of Somalia and the tip of the eastern horn has no airports, and the citizens of those sparsely inhabited regions are hundreds of miles from an airport. Egypt has more than 30 airports, including more than a dozen in the Cairo/ Alexandria region alone. The airports are fairly evenly distributed among all densely inhabited areas along the northern coast and Nile. In general, this points to a very strong transportation infrastructure in Egypt, a relatively weak transportation infrastructure in Cameroon and Malawi, and an extremely underdeveloped infrastructure in Somalia.

http://screencast.com/t/iEtwj0h7iA (Cameroon airports)
http://screencast.com/t/G3dbzgNDEs (Malawi airports)
http://screencast.com/t/JuJ7oOEny6 (Somalia airports)
http://screencast.com/t/zmQLOq22ug6R (Egypt airports)

Observing these four countries based only on these metrics, among the dozens available on AfricaMap, reveals four states with vastly different sets of strengths and weaknesses. Cameroon has an extremely high degree of ethnic diversity stretching from the densely populated southwest to the isolated central and eastern regions. Given the uneven geographic distribution of infrastructure, this suggests a country where wealth and government services are concentrated in the more developed southwest, at the expense of the sparsely populated center and east. Malawi is similarly very ethnically diverse and has a population concentrated in the more developed southern portion of the country. However, the country's near-universal access to the freshwater of Lake Malawi and relatively small size allow for a state where no region is especially sparsely populated or underdeveloped. Of the four countries, Somalia is the one that appears most intuitively problematic. It is fairly ethnically diverse, has a disproportionately rural population with large, sparsely populated regions, and has extremely underdeveloped infrastructure. Egypt, inversely, has well-developed transportation infrastructure and and the vast majority of its population appears to live in high density areas.