mwmapdata

mwmapdata provides official spatial boundary datasets for Malawi, for use with the mwmap package or any spatial analysis workflow requiring Malawi administrative boundaries.

Datasets

Object	Level	Features	Description
`mw_level_0`	0	1	National boundary
`mw_level_1`	1	3	Administrative regions (N, C, S)
`mw_level_2`	2	32	Districts (incl. 4 city districts)
`mw_level_3`	3	433	Traditional authorities
`major_lakes`	—	1	Lake Malawi / Lake Nyasa
`malawi_data`	2	32	Legacy alias for `mw_level_2` (deprecated)

All levels include area_sqkm, center_lat, and center_lon columns.

Boundary data are the official Common Operational Datasets (COD-AB) sourced from the National Statistics Office of Malawi, distributed via OCHA Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX), version 02 (valid from 05 April 2023).

Installation

# From CRAN (once available)
install.packages("mwmapdata")

# Development version
# remotes::install_github("bitacanalytics/mwmapdata")
install.packages("mwmapdata", repos = c('https://bitacanalytics.r-universe.dev', 'https://cloud.r-project.org'))

Usage

library(mwmapdata)
library(sf)

# Plot all 32 districts
plot(st_geometry(mw_level_2))

# Plot traditional authorities in a single district
lilongwe_tas <- mw_level_3[mw_level_3$DISTRICT == "Lilongwe", ]
plot(st_geometry(lilongwe_tas))

# Check data validity
mwmapdata_check()

Data notes

mw_level_2 contains 32 districts, including the 4 city districts (Blantyre City, Lilongwe City, Mzuzu City, Zomba City) added in the 2023 boundary update. Earlier datasets had 28 districts.
mw_level_3 contains 433 traditional authorities, up from ~250 in earlier boundary versions.
The major_lakes object contains Lake Malawi / Lake Nyasa. The administrative boundary source files do not include Lake Malombe or Lake Chilwa polygons.
The malawi_data object is retained for backwards compatibility only and mirrors mw_level_2. Use mw_level_2 instead.

License

Data: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) — National Statistics Office of Malawi / OCHA HDX