01
The Maravi Kingdom
Iron, ivory and cloth traded from the highlands to the Indian Ocean, and a king whose influence reached three modern countries.
Discover Malawi
A country worth knowing.
Malawi is one of the least-known countries in Africa and one of the warmest. This section of the site is about the place behind the brand: its kingdom, its history, its coffee and its people.
i
The place
Small, landlocked and dominated by water.
Malawi sits in south-eastern Africa, bordered by Tanzania to the north, Mozambique to the east and south, and Zambia to the west. It is about the size of England and Wales together, and roughly a fifth of it is Lake Malawi — the vast, clear lake that runs most of its length and gives the country its character.
Around 21 million people live there. Chichewa and English are the main languages. Most families farm; agriculture employs more than four-fifths of the workforce and produces the great majority of export earnings, with tobacco, tea, sugar and coffee among the crops.
Lilongwe is the capital and, since the 2018 census, the largest city. Blantyre, in the south, remains the commercial and judicial centre, close to the tea and coffee estates of Thyolo and Mulanje.
21mpeople (World Bank, 2023)
1/5of the country is lake
1964independence
1480the Maravi Kingdom’s traditional founding
ii
The name
Maravi, and the country called Malawi.
The name Maravi belonged to a kingdom, a people and a trade network long before it belonged to a coffee shop. The modern country’s name, Malawi, is generally traced back to it — the same root, differently spelled by different generations and different languages.
That is why the brand carries it. A café called Maravi is making a small claim about origin: that the coffee, the name and the country belong together.
02
Malawi: a short history
From early settlement and the Yao and Ngoni migrations, through empire and Nyasaland, to independence and democracy.
03
Coffee and its growers
A crop carried on heads and by river, nearly lost to disease, and rebuilt by co-operatives.
iii
Why it matters
A brand with a country’s name should know the country.
Most people outside Africa could not place Malawi on a map. That is not the country’s fault; it is a failure of storytelling. A coffee brand that carries a Malawian name has an unusual opportunity — and a responsibility — to tell it properly.
So this site does three things at once. It explains SUMLII’s purpose inside the group. It tells the family’s own story of five generations in Malawi. And it gives the country itself room: its kingdom, its difficult colonial century, its independence, its coffee and the growers who still carry the crop.
The family’s own work is part of that story too: three café projects, photographed before and after, in Blantyre and Lilongwe.
Watch and listen
Films about Malawi.
Verified documentaries and clips on the country, the kingdom and its coffee — collected on one page.