How Malawi is winning the fight for conservation

To a dawn soundtrack of Malawian hip-hop, an olive sunbird alights on a guava tree and scans the land. All around, in the half-light, cultivated green slopes ripple into the distance. A worker wanders through rows of leafy plants to begin his shift, a tinny rap beat emanating from his phone. It’s 6.15am, and, as it’s done every morning for the past century, Satemwa Tea Estate is waking up.

A small nation by African standards — it covers 45,000sq miles, roughly an eighth the size of neighbouring Tanzania — Malawi is home to some of the continent’s oldest tea estates. Satemwa was established in 1923, in the Shire Highlands of the country’s southeast, and some of its original plants are still producing new leaves.

“This is a special place,” says Lameck Michael, the estate’s birdwatching guide, who meets me at daybreak. He wears a thick blue jumper against the chill and has a pair of heavy-duty binoculars around his neck. As he talks, his gaze follows a trumpeter hornbill flying above the treetops. “Yes. A special place in many different ways.”

If it seems unusual for a tea estate to have a birdwatching guide, it says something about Satemwa’s approach to sustainability and conservation, which centres on community involvement and land stewardship. The estate’s fields — primarily tea-growing, but also sewn with coffee plants — swell across 3,700 acres, but they’re interspersed with large swathes of mahogany woodland that shelter everything from bushbuck antelopes to porcupines. Where possible, these form wildlife corridors across the estate, essentially creating a working farm crisscrossed by jungle.

From sunrise, teams of workers are out in the fields, plucking fresh shoots from the plants. Around 1,200 people are employed here year-round, rising to 2,000 in the peak picking season from December to May, with a commitment to at least 60% of the workforce being female. The on-site primary school, meanwhile, teaches 1,000 local children and is currently funding more than 50 others as they pursue further education.

Tourism is another part of the set-up. Overnight guests stay in Huntingdon House, in the middle of the estate — a colonnaded 1930s bungalow with clawed bathtubs, antique armchairs and luxuriant plants in silver vases. On my first night, I’m sitting by the roaring log fire in reception when a chittering sound reveals a fruit bat hanging in the curtains.

Birdwatching, cycle rides and tea-tastings are all among the experiences offered to visitors. With Lameck, the former is a joy. “We’ve recorded more than 600 species on the estate alone,” he says proudly, as we walk among jacaranda trees and azalea bushes on the fringes of the tea fields. Tiny, green-backed camaroptera — like wrens in lime jackets — flit into view as a golden oriole perches in fluorescent glory on an albizia tree.

The trees and wildlife are part of a carefully crafted whole. The albizia roots fix nitrogen in the soil, helping the tea plants to flourish, while the patches of pristine forest — dense with foliage and churring with birdsong — keep biodiversity levels healthy on the estate. Then, of course, there’s the tea itself.

Emma Chimalizeni pours hot drinks with a steady hand. Once a pupil at the estate’s primary school, she’s a manager at its on-site leaf-processing factory. Working methodically in a white lab coat, she sets out 18 tasting cups on the table in front of me. Satemwa’s range of black, green, oolong, white and dark teas were the first in Malawi to be Fairtrade-certified; some are now on the menu at Claridge’s in London and Noma in Copenhagen.

“Sip the tea, slurp loudly to aerate it, then swish it around,” instructs Emma. “That’s how you’ll get the flavour profile.” The noises I make are ridiculous, but the tastes are richly intense. “That one’s my favourite,” she says, pointing to one of the black teas as I work my way through the cups. Then, as if imparting a crucial piece of wisdom: “With sugar, no milk.”

I’m taken aback when she tells me plucked plants can take just seven days to regrow fresh, pickable leaves. And the leaves’ journey from bush to tea bag — during which they’re spread out to reduce moisture, then rolled, then oxidated, then fire-dried — can be as short as 18 hours.

Walking back through the estate afterwards, I watch the work taking place in the emerald-green fields, with Malawi’s highest peak, Mount Mulanje, looming over it all in the distance. Tea tends to be something we take for granted, but it occurs to me that my morning cuppa won’t ever taste quite the same again.

Back to nature

Three hours to the north, a family is on the move. It’s minutes after sunset in Liwonde National Park, and, as dusk settles on the sage-scented grassland, five lions stalk towards the Shire River. Two lionesses, three cubs, one end goal: finding something to eat. The cats tread slowly and silently, their coats mussed and tawny, their eyes fixed on the impalas grazing the floodplain. Stalk, stop, stare. Stalk, stop, stare.

For what seems an age, our lone vehicle watches the predators creep through the twilight. Suddenly, a commotion. The presence of the pride is sensed by a troop of baboons, who grunt out a cacophonous alarm call. The impalas go into full alert, their would-be assailants meeting this misfortune with stoicism. The lions stay low and stare. Foiled, but only for now. The night is young.

Such ups and downs are mirrored in the life of Liwonde itself. This 212sq-mile expanse of mopane woodland became a national park in 1973, but has routinely been hit by poaching, meaning some species have dwindled to nothing. Human-wildlife conflict, such as elephants damaging local property, has also been a problem. However, since 2015, when nonprofit organisation African Parks took over management, things have started looking up.

“Welcome aboard,” smiles guide Danger Chipino when I arrive, ushering me onto the green wooden boat which will take us across the Shire River, a natural border along the park’s western edge. A tributary of the Zambezi, the river is a watery portal to another world, a wide channel where hippos bob and yellow-billed storks soar overhead.

As we rumble out on a game drive that afternoon — side-striped jackals padding through the dust, prodigiously horned kudus standing statuesque in the bush, a vast bull elephant plodding south — Danger brushes an insect from his khaki shirt and tells me about the successful recovery of Liwonde’s diverse wildlife population.

“It’s kind of amazing,” he says. In the past decade, black rhinos, cheetahs, lions and wild dogs have all been reintroduced to Liwonde from other parts of Africa, and over 40,000 wire snares have been removed. At the same time, more than 250 elephants have over 40,000 wire snares have been removed. At the same time, more than 250 elephants have been translocated to other Malawian parks to reduce pressure on the ecosystem here. There have been challenges — the wild dog pack, for example, has been hit by a suspected poisoning — but the overall picture has been one of sustained growth and rebirth.

Community outreach has also been a priority. A social enterprise called Spicy Farmers now trains local smallholders to plant barriers of bird’s eye chilli plants along the park’s land borders, as both a means of income and a deterrent to wildlife. I’m also taken to see a beekeeping initiative that works in the same way — elephants, as it happens, are averse to both chillies and bees.

“I have four hives,” explains Enelesi Maluwa, who wears a patterned chitenge fabric skirt as she leads me to a wooden hive in the park’s forested fringe. “On average, they produce five litres of honey every two months.”

That honey appears on the breakfast table at Mvuu Lodge, where I’ve based myself — one of only a handful of accommodation options in the park. The tented chalets are spacious and the food is excellent — the menus are supplemented by a large, on-site organic vegetable garden. At night, the air hums with zoological sounds: crickets chirp, frogs ribbit, hippos honk offbeat lullabies. It’s very easy to get a good night’s sleep.

The lodge is owned and run by Central African Wilderness Safaris, which — like Satemwa Tea Estate — takes sustainability seriously. Almost all of its 80 staff are from nearby villages, four-fifths of its power is solar-generated and the company’s tourism revenue supports reforestation and education initiatives. Scholarships are awarded to promising local students, while eco-clubs have been set up at 15 regional primary schools, with children invited to experience safaris first-hand: big cats, baobab trees and all.

At the waterside dining area, with a vervet monkey eyeing my breakfast, I meet 23-year-old trainee guide Jeany Hendreson Phiri. Having grown up a five-minute walk from the park’s border, she’s now 18 months into her training.

She speaks softly, recalling the first time she came here on a school-group safari. “It was awesome,” she says. “I remember seeing a sable antelope. Such a beautiful animal. I always lived so close to the park, but I’d never seen one before; it’s still stuck in my mind. I was inspired by the guides, too, so when the opportunity came up to train here — wow.”

The next morning, I join a guided walking safari from camp. The sights and smells of the bush swim around us. We encounter fresh rhino dung, neat cheetah prints and picked-clean elephant bones. We step through tall groves of yellow fever trees and fragrant beds of wild basil. To be wandering among it all is a thrill. At one point, we pass a ‘hippo highway’, a self-made path along which these heavy herbivores travel between the river and their feeding grounds. It cuts a clear, trammelled route through the undergrowth, and I learn that it’s likely been in use for decades, if not centuries, passed down from hippo parent to hippo calf. A further reminder that in a park like Liwonde, preserving the future is a weighty responsibility.

Down in the depths

Upstream from the Shire River is a giant pool of never-ending blue. “Lake Malawi,” says my guide Precious Divala, stepping to the edge of the summit we’ve just hiked and running a hand over his shaven head. To the south, the land is a rust-coloured rumple of peaks and flatlands. To the north and west, all is water. We stand and stare as the sun rises behind us. It’s a sight that needs few words.

Lake Malawi is a Unesco-listed marvel, stretching 50 miles across and more than 350 miles from end to end, dropping down to depths of approximately 2,300ft. Slung along the ancient Great Rift Valley, it covers around a fifth of Malawi’s total area. We’re close to its southern tip, about three hours north of Liwonde National Park by car.

When I arrived at Pumulani Lodge last night, there were tiny dots of light on the lake’s inky surface. The waters here hold at least 1,000 different freshwater fish species — more than Europe and North America combined — which in turn draw fleets of nightly fishing canoes, whose lamps twinkle silently into the early hours. Hence its nickname: the Lake of Stars.

The lodge’s terrace and villas stand on a hillside overlooking the lake, with steps leading down to a beach. One morning, I push a kayak out and paddle around the headland, watching fish eagles and hamerkops glide above the wooded shoreline. At sunset, Precious steers us out into deeper waters on a sailing dhow, from where the scale of the lake is even more pronounced.

The highlight for many travellers, however, is the chance to snorkel. In the same way that Charles Darwin noted the evolutionary variations between finches on different Galápagos islands, Lake Malawi’s cichlids — a diverse family of perch-like fish — have adapted into hundreds of separate species to fit different ecological niches within the lake. Some are big, some are small. Some are insect-feeders, others are algae-nibblers. Nearly all are found here and here only.

To pull on a mask and experience this endemic underwater life is remarkable. When below the surface in a small bay, I’m faced with countless varieties of fish all at once. Tiny sparks of silver, fast-swimming flashes of yellow and neon blue, slow-moving schools of lavender and orange. It’s a piscine blitz of spots, stripes and swishing tails. “This is why Unesco protects the lake,” says Precious when I emerge. “There’s nowhere quite like it.”

Balancing this diversity of species with the livelihoods of the shoreline communities, however, is a complex task. Night fishers are prone to illicitly trawling the waters with repurposed mosquito nets, the fine mesh of which scoops up everything in its path — as opposed to the legally required, looser-weave nets, which allow smaller species to slip through, sustaining the lake’s food chain.

The next morning, in the lakeside settlement of Msaka, the canoes return from a night on the water. As each one is pulled onto the sand, villagers crowd around expectantly. Some have fared well with their efforts and bagged a decent haul, others less so. I’ve come here with Mercy Gama, the area project manager for Ripple Africa, a Malawian charity aimed at giving the lake’s fishing communities a sustainable future. She wears a brightly coloured T-shirt and weighs her words carefully.

“We’ve tried to give locals a sense of ownership,” she explains, as we watch fistfuls of sardines being exchanged for balled-up banknotes. “We’ve set up village committees and aimed to show communities that it pays to fish responsibly. In the long term, using the larger meshed nets means more large fish and, ultimately, more money.” The scheme has had marked success, to the point that its initial 2021-2023 project received the funding it needed to ensure it continues into the future.

The other key part of the charity’s local remit is introducing fuel-efficient cookstoves to lakeside houses. Made of mudbricks, they produce less smoke and require only a fraction of the wood of a standard stove. Mercy shows me one in action in the house of an elderly woman, who, after lighting her stove, stands up and begins dancing a jig. “I think this means she likes it,” says Mercy with a smile.

Behind us, the world’s third-deepest lake stretches out to infinity, its freshwater waves lapping gently against the shore. The work being done by Ripple Africa is about “giving a hand up rather than a handout” Mercy tells me. It’s a neat way of looking at a project that — as in Satemwa and Liwonde — deals with social and sustainability issues that are often far from straightforward. As a place to visit, Malawi is warm, welcoming and full of extraordinary sights — and beyond the well-known highlights, there’s plenty going on beneath the surface.