Nsanje (formerly Port Herald) is the main city in
Nsanje District within the
Southern Region of Malawi.
The intense urbanization in the fertile
Shire River 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
Marka may refer to:
Places
* Marka (river), Lower Saxony, Germany
* Marka, Iran, a village in South Khorasan Province
* Marka, Malawi a town in Nsanje District
* Marka district, Jordan
* Marka refugee camp, a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan
* ...
, in the south, even crossing the Mozambican border, covering the town of
.
Transport
The city has a railway station on the
Sena railway, under concession of
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 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
Shire River 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
/ref>
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