A capital with two centres and bush in between.

Lilongwe began around 1902 as a trading post at a crossroads beside the river that gives it its name. In 1975 it became the capital and a whole planned city was added, laid out from scratch and placed several kilometres from the one that already existed. The result is a capital with two separate centres and a green void between them.

MRMaría ReyesDestinations editor

15 August 2026· 9 min read

A raised pedestrian walkway in a concrete shopping complex: on the left, a white two-storey building with a continuous balcony and air-conditioning units lined up at ground level; the paving, in grey slabs, runs straight and empty beside a low concrete parapet separating the walkway from a lower level; to the right, on that level, a courtyard with plastic tables and chairs under parasols, a sign reading 'Centre House Arcade' and an arcaded gallery; at the centre of the frame stands a large tree with a grey trunk and wholly bare branches fanning out above the whole scene; the sky is white and veiled.Malawiana·Dominio público

01 A crossroads beside the river

The site is on a plateau at about 1,050 metres, in the country's agricultural heart. The logic of the place is a market's: flat, reachable from several directions, with water and with production all around. That first nucleus is what is known today as the Old Town.

And it is still recognisable as what it was. It is the part of the city where the markets, the transport hubs and the street trade are, with a denser, more disordered and older fabric. If you are looking for the city that existed before there was a capital, all of it is here.

The wide bed of a river in the dry season seen from the bank: in the foreground, a spread of brown sand and silt, dry and cracked, with vehicle ruts and scattered tufts of grass; at the centre, the water is reduced to a wide, shallow channel with a still surface and exposed sandbanks; both banks are taken over by a continuous belt of reeds and green scrub; at the back, low trees and a line of gently profiled hills blurred by haze, with a column of dark smoke rising on the right; the sky intense blue and cloudless. — The Lilongwe River in the dry season. Between June and September the city receives between 0 and 1 millimetres of rain a month.Timon Zingg / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 · CC BY-SA 3.0

02 The city added in 1975

In 1975 Lilongwe became the country's capital, replacing Zomba. The decision was not to remodel the existing city but to design another one beside it: a planned administrative centre, with institutional headquarters, embassies and facilities, laid out from scratch and separated from the commercial nucleus. It is known as the City Centre.

The contrast between the two is immediate and quite instructive. The new city has large blocks, straight avenues, planted trees and 1970s concrete architecture: one- and two-storey shopping arcades, colonnades, raised walkways and surface parking. Everything is designed for arriving by car.

Population followed that jump in scale. In 1966 the city had about 19,425 inhabitants; by 2018 it was approaching a million. That growth, at a rate of the order of four per cent a year, spread across the two poles and the strip left between them.

03 The void in the middle

The most singular thing about Lilongwe is neither of its two centres but what lies between them. The river corridor separating the old city from the new was not built on: it remained a belt of vegetation crossing the city from side to side, and part of it is protected as a natural area inside the built-up core.

An overhead photograph of a city taken from low orbit: the urban fabric appears as a grey and brown patch of very loose layout, with streets branching in curves and clusters of plots separated by dark masses of trees; towards the right and the bottom, the patch breaks up into open country in ochre and reddish tones with rectangular cultivated plots and dirt tracks; a sinuous line of darker vegetation crosses the frame marking the course of a river, with what look like rectangular ponds beside it; several small white clouds float above the image and cast their shadows. — The city from orbit. The loose layout and the patches of trees between neighbourhoods read better from above than from the street.NASA Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain · Public domain

That decision, plus the low-density layout of the new city, produces a capital with an unusual proportion of green. Seen from the air, the urban patch is not a compact block but a loose fabric in which the masses of trees take up almost as much room as the building does.

The price of that spaciousness is distance. The two centres are several kilometres apart, and there is no continuous walk joining them: the relationship between the two is settled by vehicle. It is a city that is comfortable to live in and impractical to cross end to end on foot.

04 How it is covered

What works is to treat it as two separate visits and not try to stitch them into one walk. One morning for the old city, which is where the street trade, the markets and the craft stalls are; another for the new city, which is covered through its arcades and walkways and is understood in a short while.

An open-air craft stall set up beside the thick trunk of a tree and a low stone wall: at the centre, a nearly life-size motorcycle built entirely from woven thin wire, with wheels, handlebars, tank and saddle perfectly formed; behind, three large hand-painted cloths hang from a line, one pink with a yellow sun, another fuchsia with elephant silhouettes and another maroon with human figures and geometric borders; on the left, patterned fabric bags, a beaded star-shaped object and hanging mobiles; below, a small plant grows among the stones; nobody is in the frame. — Wire craftwork and painted cloths at an open-air stall. Street trade is what defines the older half of the city.Hansueli Krapf / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 · CC BY-SA 3.0

It is worth giving time to the green corridor in the middle, because it is what makes this capital different and what gets talked about least. It is also the only part where the two worlds touch without transition: the bush comes right up to the edge of the built city.

And a note on the calendar, because here the year splits sharply: in July and August mean precipitation is zero millimetres, while in January it is 223. If you can choose, the dry half of the year makes the visit far simpler.

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Last updated 15 August 2026 · reviewed by the FlowTravel desk

María Reyes

Destinations editor · Flowtravel

María looks for the reason a place ended up where it is.

More about this destination

When to go

01 A crossroads beside the river

02 The city added in 1975

03 The void in the middle

04 How it is covered

María Reyes

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