Country · 27 regions
Where Malawi's land ends up, by people and by money
Every block on the map is 0.1% of Malawi. By land, Lilongwe holds 5.4%. By people, it holds 16%. Chitipa goes the other way, from 11% of the land to 3.6% of the people. By GDP, Blantyre punches above its population: 6.6% of the people, 16% of the economy.
GDP for Malawi is modelled from its national total, so the GDP map mostly repeats the population map.
| Region | Land | People | GDP |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lilongwe | 5.4 | 16 | 25 |
| Mzimba | 9.3 | 7.0 | 5.7 |
| Blantyre | 1.6 | 6.6 | 16 |
| Mangochi | 7.2 | 5.7 | 4.2 |
| Kasungu | 7.3 | 4.9 | 4.1 |
| Dedza | 3.5 | 4.7 | 3.0 |
| Zomba | 2.2 | 4.4 | 4.2 |
| Thyolo | 1.3 | 4.3 | 4.9 |
| Dowa | 2.2 | 4.0 | 2.3 |
| Machinga | 3.4 | 4.0 | 2.7 |
| Mchinji | 3.0 | 4.0 | 3.0 |
| Ntcheu | 3.3 | 4.0 | 2.6 |
| Chitipa | 11 | 3.6 | 2.9 |
| Mulanje | 1.7 | 3.5 | 2.6 |
| Chikwawa | 4.1 | 3.1 | 2.3 |
| Salima | 3.7 | 2.7 | 1.9 |
| Balaka | 1.8 | 2.3 | 1.3 |
| Nkhotakota | 6.6 | 2.2 | 1.5 |
| Chiradzulu | 0.70 | 2.0 | 2.7 |
| Ntchisi | 1.5 | 2.0 | 1.3 |
| Phalombe | 1.2 | 2.0 | 1.4 |
| Nkhata Bay | 8.8 | 1.8 | 1.5 |
| Nsanje | 1.7 | 1.6 | 1.0 |
| Neno | 1.2 | 1.2 | 0.90 |
| Mwanza | 0.99 | 1.1 | 0.70 |
| Rumphi | 5.6 | 1.1 | 1.0 |
| Likoma | 0.20 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
How the map is made
Regions are drawn on an equal-area grid of about 1,000 blocks. For land, each region keeps the blocks its territory covers. For people and GDP, the country is reshaped so every region gets a whole number of blocks in proportion to its share (Hamilton's largest-remainder method), keeping neighbours next to each other. Then every block is matched to one block on the next map, so you watch the same thousand blocks rearrange.
Grids: popgrid by Josep Ferrer (MIT). Boundaries: Natural Earth. Population: national censuses where curated, GHS-POP 2025 (JRC, European Commission) elsewhere. GDP: Kummu et al. 2025 gridded GDP PPP (CC BY 4.0). Built by Crafter Station.