At the time of independence in 1964 over 95 per cent of Malawi's population lived in the countryside and the economy was almost entirely agricultural in character. Nevertheless, the importance of Malawi's colonial towns should not be underestimated. In their different ways, settlements like Blantyre, Limbe, Zomba and Lilongwe epitomised the colonial imagination at its most vivid in the way that urban space was ordered into precisely designated functions, normally involving the segregation of the European zone from Asian and African sections. Although towns were thus perceived as strong points in the colonial system of control the reality was often rather different. In the years after 1945, Blantyre and Limbe witnessed the emergence of a group of independent African businessmen, several of whom also played a part in a short-lived but comparatively militant labour movement. At the same time, Africans living in the vicinity of Blantyre, most of themin peri-urban villages such as Ndirande not directly under colonial control, forged a distinctive urban-rural culture. This involved both a continued commitment to the rural village as the place of ultimate identity to which most Malawians expected to return, and exposure to a variety of predominantly urban experiences – in sport and in leisure as well as at the work place.

New towns for old

With few exceptions, indigenous towns were casualties of the colonial occupation. Commercial settlements such as those established by Mlozi near Karonga and by Makanjira were destroyed by the British during the anti-slave trade campaign, and although a new Makanjira's was constructed on the lakeshore it was a shadow of what had existed before.