Nsanje (formerly Port Herald) is the main city in

Nsanje District Nsanje is a district in the Southern Region of Malawi. The capital is Nsanje. The district covers an area of and has a population of 194,924. In addition to the city of Nsanje, it has the important cities of Bangula, Marka, Tengani, and Fat ...

within the Southern Region of Malawi. The intense urbanization in the fertile

Shire River The Shire is the largest river in Malawi. It is the only outlet of Lake Malawi and flows into the Zambezi River in Mozambique. Its length is . The upper Shire River issues from Lake Malawi and runs approximately before it enters shallow Lake Malo ...

valley has formed an extensive urbanized zone that runs from the city of

Bangula Bangula is a town of about 5000 population in southern region district of Nsanje in Malawi. There is also a commune of the same name. Its elevation is 100m. It is located on the western bank of the Shire River, near the confluence of the Shire and ...

, further north, passing through the city of Nsanje, in the center, and arriving in the city of Marka, in the south, even crossing the Mozambican border, covering the town of Vila Nova de Fronteira.

Transport

The city has a railway station on the

Sena railway Sena railway, also called Shire Highlands railway, Dondo-Malawi railway and North-South Malawi railway, is a railway that connects Dondo, Mozambique, to Chipata, in Zambia. It is 1000 km long, in a 1067 mm gauge.Central East African Railways Central East African Railways is a consortium formed in 1999, led by the Railroad Development Corporation, which won the right to operate the Malawi Railways network. The company was sold in September 2008 to INSITEC, an investment group based in ...

. The railway through Nsanje that connects

Blantyre Blantyre () is Malawi's centre of finance and commerce, and its second largest city, with an enumerated 800,264 inhabitants . It is sometimes referred to as the commercial and industrial capital of Malawi as opposed to the political capital, L ...

with

Beira, Mozambique Beira is the capital and largest city of Sofala Province, where the Pungwe River meets the Indian Ocean, in the central region of Mozambique. It is the fourth-largest city by population in Mozambique, after Maputo, Matola and Nampula. Beira had a ...

was severely disrupted by the

Mozambique Civil War The Mozambican Civil War ( pt, Guerra Civil Moçambicana) was a civil war fought in Mozambique from 1977 to 1992. Like many regional African conflicts during the late twentieth century, the Mozambican Civil War possessed local dynamics but was a ...

and remains closed. The main road north connecting the city to the rest of Malawi is being upgraded.

Shipping

A project is currently underway to dredge part of the

in order to make sea transport to Malawi viable. The Shire merges with the Zambezi River, near Caia, Mozambique, and the Zambezi then flows into the Indian Ocean. As of September, 2010, some of the main concrete work on the jetty was complete and the port was officially declared open in a ceremony attended by President Bingu wa Mutharika of Malawi and President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. However, by August 2016 the port was still incomplete and unused, despite a feasibility study with positive results concluded a few months earlier, and talks were being held on restarting the project.Nyasa Times, August 15, 2016
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Climate

Nsanje lies only about 46 meters above sea level. During the summer months, daytime highs can exceed 120° Fahrenheit (49° Celsius).

Demographics

References

{{commons category, Nsanje Shire River Populated places in Southern Region, Malawi