Malawi's traditional tea estates are characterized by British-style manor management, a legacy of the country's colonial past that has shaped its tea industry for over a century.
These estates, which are primarily located in the Mulanje and Thyolo districts, feature large, contiguous tea plantations, meticulously maintained by skilled workers. The management practices employed on these estates were first introduced by British colonists in the late 19th century and include regular pruning of tea bushes, manual weeding, and hand-picking of tea leaves-practices that are still widely used today.
One of the most famous of these estates is the Satemwa Tea Estate, established in the 1930s, which has a long history of producing high-quality tea. In 2006, Satemwa restored its traditional handcrafted green tea production, reviving age-old techniques that had been largely replaced by modern machinery.
Today, Malawi's traditional tea estates continue to produce some of Africa's finest green tea, combining colonial-era management practices with modern sustainability standards to create a unique and high-quality product.
