Malawi 🇲🇼

Filed under Africa and more precisely Eastern Africa, Malawi is a sovereign state. In formal use it is Republic of Malawi. Lilongwe is the capital.

By land area it covers 118,484 km², which ranks it 100th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind North Korea and just ahead of Eritrea. Put next to a country most people can picture, it is a fraction smaller than Greece.

Around 21.7 million people live there, placing it 62nd of 249 by population — between Sri Lanka above it and Zambia below. Measured only against its own subregion, it is 10th of 20 in size and 7th in population.

Malawi has no coastline of its own, so every ship-borne import and export crosses somebody else's border first. The good news is that the sea is only one frontier away: Tanzania and Mozambique have coastline, which makes them the obvious routes for freight heading to a port.

That geography has practical consequences. Landlocked countries carry higher freight costs than coastal ones because goods change hands, transport mode and jurisdiction more often, and because a neighbour's road, rail or customs problem becomes Malawi's problem too. It is also why transit agreements with bordering states, and access to their ports, tend to matter more in Malawi's foreign policy than the distance on a map would suggest.

Of the countries on Malawi's borders, Zambia is landlocked as well, so a route in that direction only moves the problem along. The remaining borders are the ones that lead, eventually, to salt water.

Coastal countries on the border:

• 🇹🇿 Tanzania
• 🇲🇿 Mozambique

Its reference point sits at 13.5° south and 34.0° east, which puts it in the southern hemisphere, roughly 1,503 km from the equator, in what geographers would call tropical latitudes.

Countries on the same parallel, far away in longitude, include French Polynesia, Samoa and American Samoa.

Its land neighbours number 3: Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia. The largest of them by area is Tanzania, which is also the most populous. Together those neighbours hold about 124.5 million people.

This is one of the world's landlocked countries. That is true of 45 of the 249 entries here, so all seaborne trade runs through a neighbour's ports. One of its neighbours, Zambia, is landlocked too. You can see the full picture on the landlocked countries page.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Malawi ranks 100th of 249 by area and 62nd by population. That works out at 0.079% of the combined land area of all 249 entries and 0.27% of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of Malawi in the size ordering are North Korea at 120,538 km² and Eritrea at 117,600 km², against Malawi's 118,484 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Malawi averages 183 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it densely settled by global standards — 75th of the 247 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

Spread across 118,484 km², that works out at about 183 people per square kilometre, which makes it more crowded than the typical entry on this list. The median across all 249 entries here is about 91 per square kilometre.

People from Malawi are called Malawians.

2 languages carry official status: Chewa and English. Chewa, the first listed, is shared with 1 other entry worldwide.

Inside Africa it places 21st of 59 by population, and it accounts for 4.4% of everyone living in Eastern Africa.

Zoom in from the world to Eastern Africa and Malawi sits 7th of 20 by population and 10th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Madagascar just above and Zambia just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

Ethiopia is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in Eastern Africa has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇲🇬 Madagascar
• 🇿🇲 Zambia
• 🇪🇹 Ethiopia

The Malawian kwacha (MWK) is used only in Malawi among the 249 entries on this site. Its own currency is one of the clearest markers of an economy that sets its own monetary policy rather than importing somebody else's.

Language reaches wider still. English is listed for 91 entries here, Malawi among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.

Money there is the Malawian kwacha (MK, MWK). No other entry in this dataset uses it, so the currency is specific to Malawi.

If a quiz asks for the capital of Malawi, the answer is Lilongwe.

Websites there use the .mw domain. The international dialling code is +265. Its ISO codes are mw and MWI, which is what most databases and flag files use.

As a sovereign state it is among the 192 UN members listed here. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.