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Blantyre
City in Malawi

Blantyre

Blantyre is Malawi's centre of finance and commerce, and its second largest city, with a population of 800,264 as of 2018.

Plan a trip to Blantyre→From Lumbadzi

It is sometimes referred to as the commercial and industrial capital of Malawi as opposed to the political capital, Lilongwe. It is the capital of the country's Southern Region as well as the Blantyre District.

Get in

Getting to Blantyre

Malawi airlines has flights between Johannesburg (South Africa) and Blantyre. Air Malawi also flies to Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Harare (Zimbabwe), Lusaka (Zambia), and Nairobi (Kenya). Ethiopian Airlines has flights to and from Addis Ababa (via Beira in Mozambique on the return to Addis). There are taxis to city centre or you can walk to the highways and get a bus.(kwacha).

  1. 01
    Chileka International Airport

    Rail services to Blantyre are close to non-existent and not practical at all for the everyday tourist.

  2. 02
    Blantyre
See

Worth seeing

  1. 01
    Mandala House

    One of the oldest buildings in Blantyre and has spacious grounds with a children's playground.

  2. 02
    Museum of Malawi
Do

Things to do

Record a Song, Synod Offices, CCAP Blantyre Mission, Chileka Road (Get yourself first to St Michael and All Angels Church. From the front door face down the hill and ahead and on your left you will see some offices. Go in and check that they are the Synod Offices and ask for the recording studios or the music director). Daily 8AM-4:30PM. Did Malawi put a song into your heart?

Eat

Where to eat

Vendors are all over the streets in Blantyre. They sell a range of food items from fried chips, chicken, to hard boiled eggs, bread (mostly milkscone variety and yellow buns), biscuits (locally made from Universal Industries), and so on. Plenty of ripe fruit and vegetables are also readily available for a good price.

How locals move

Getting around Blantyre the local way

  • Get aroundFor the budget traveller there are basically two ways of getting around Blantyre: by foot or by minibus.
  • Get aroundIt is possible to explore the entire city of Blantyre on foot within a couple of days, and unless you are travelling to Limbe or to the outer suburbs of Blantyre, then it is unlikely you'll require even the minibus.
  • Get aroundIn the event that you do, then minibuses are very cheap, travelling between Blantyre and Limbe costs MK 350 (as of January 2018).

From Wikivoyage: Blantyre, CC BY-SA. Not yet checked by us. Last edited 2026-09.

Text adapted from Wikipedia and Wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 4.0. Photograph: Wikimedia Commons (see file page), Wikimedia Commons.