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Mandala, Malawi’s oldest company, is seeking to
help the people of this heavily populated country
improve their standard of living. This is a stern
task given that Malawi is landlocked and depends
almost entirely on agriculture: it has little
mineral wealth.
Mandala, a nickname referring to the reflection
of light from its first general manager’s glasses,
was initially established in 1878 by Frederick and
John Moir. They wanted to underpin the work of
Scottish missionaries with commerce. The company
singlehandedly fought the slave traders in the
north of Nyasaland for two years between 1887 and
1889, thereby greatly helping to remove this
scourge from Africa.
The African Lakes Corporation was formed in
Glasgow with Mandala as the Nyasaland branch. It
did not officially adopt the Mandala name until
1977 when it became a company in its own right,
incorporated in Malawi.
Mandala began as an inland shipping and
transport company, operating steamers on the Shire
and Zambezi rivers and Lake Nyasa. It later
diversified into general trading. After Malawi
became independent, it left trading and developed
businesses in agriculture, motors and hotels.
At the turn of the century, it established a
rubber estate near Nkhata Bay in the north. A major
programme to expand this enterprise began in the
early 1970s. Since this is the only rubber estate
in the region, there is no local supply of
equipment. A co-operative of tappers’ wives makes
clay cups (to collect the latex), which they sell
to the estate. Mandala built the kilns and supplies
the glaze. It is looking at the possibilities of
making dipped latex products and growing oil
palms.
In the south of Malawi, Mandala has coffee and
tobacco estates. The tobacco is grown in a
three-year rotation: tobacco, maize, fallow. Local
villagers grow the maize which thrives on nitrogen
left behind after the tobacco; but they must ridge
the land against erosion. Again, Mandala is looking
for new possibilities. Air transport is not regular
enough for it to join the cut-flower trade but it
is experimenting with growing flowers and herbs for
seed.
Mandala is helping to improve schools. It makes
its tractors and earth moving equipment available
to keep roads open. “We try to do as much community
work as we can,” says Don MacKenzie of African
Lakes Corporation in London. Mandala is a member of
Impact, an initiative for involving business in the
community.
For its motor trade, Mandala has established
Mandala Motor City at Blantyre. Its link with Ford
dates from 1924 and it is also the dealer for
Nissan and Daewoo. Mandala’s hotels include the
long-established Ryalls in Blantyre, and the Shire
Highlands, a centre for the tobacco community in
Limbe. In all, Mandala employs about 3,000 people.
Almost all the managers are Malawians.
Mandala is helping to take Malawi into the
forefront of information technology through its
sister company, Afcor, IBM’s business partner for
Malawi. African Lakes Corporation is a pioneer of
information technology in Africa, owning Africa on
Line, an internet service run by Africans out of
Kenya.
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