Southern Region, Malawi — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Southern Region known for?

That role sets the Southern Region apart from the rest of Malawi, since trade and business gather in one city rather than following the seat of national government. Three lakes belong to the region. Lake Malawi bounds it at the north, and Lakes Malombe and Chilwa lie inside it.

It is the most populated of the country's regions, and the record also gives it the strongest European influence.

Where is Southern Region?

Water defines the region's edges and its middle alike. Lake Malawi sits at the northern end, and the Southern Region extends south from it, which makes the largest of the country's lakes a boundary rather than an interior feature here. Two more lakes lie inside.

Lake Malombe and Lake Chilwa both fall within the region, so a traveller crossing it is rarely far from open water. The region covers a broad block of ground between Lake Malawi and the southern end of Malawi, with Lakes Malombe and Chilwa set inside that block. Three named lakes in one region is the shape of the place.

Blantyre anchors the land side. The city is capital of the Southern Region and the commercial capital of Malawi at the same time, and its weight is what pulls movement inland away from the lakeshores. It is the most populated region in the country.

That density, together with the region's compact spread between Lake Malawi at the north and its southern limit, is why distances here feel shorter than the map suggests. Malawi ends where this region ends. Nothing of the country lies beyond it, which makes the Southern Region both an edge and, in commercial terms through Blantyre, a centre.

What is Southern Region like?

European influence runs deeper here than elsewhere in the country. The record singles the Southern Region out on that count, and the commercial character of Blantyre is bound up with it, since trade rather than administration is what shaped the city's standing. English serves as the everyday language of business here.

A traveller uses it in Blantyre and along the lakes alike, and it holds across a region that is the most populated in Malawi. Lakes Malombe and Chilwa lie within reach of the same language and the same city. Blantyre carries a double weight.

It serves as capital of the Southern Region and as the commercial capital of Malawi, so the business of the whole country runs through a city that also administers one region of it. The lakes pull in the other direction. Lake Malawi at the northern end, and Lakes Malombe and Chilwa inside the region, give the Southern Region a set of destinations that owe nothing to commerce.

Both readings of the region are true at once. A visitor arriving for Blantyre and a visitor arriving for Lake Chilwa are moving through the same ground with entirely different maps in mind.

What is the history of Southern Region?

Malawi's gazetteer offers the region no founding year. What it does state is that European influence reached the Southern Region more strongly than any other part of Malawi, and that Blantyre stands as the country's commercial capital. Both facts describe the same city.

Whatever the sequence, the region carries its commercial weight in Blantyre while Lake Malawi, Lake Malombe and Lake Chilwa mark out the older geography the region was drawn around.

What is the climate of Southern Region?

The lakes are the moderating agent here. Lake Malawi at the northern end, with Lakes Malombe and Chilwa set inside the region, put a great deal of open water into ground that lies well within the tropical band. Water warms and cools slowly.

Air over the shores of Lake Chilwa or Lake Malombe therefore behaves differently from air over the drier interior of the Southern Region. Southern-hemisphere seasons apply throughout.

How do you get to Southern Region?

Blantyre is the way in. As the region's capital and the commercial capital of Malawi, the city takes the traffic that a business centre attracts, and routes onward to the lakes are built from there. Lake Malawi marks the northern approach.

Anyone coming down from the rest of Malawi enters the Southern Region at that end, since the region extends south from the lake. Lakes Malombe and Chilwa sit inside the region itself, so reaching either one means travelling within the Southern Region rather than entering it.