Private company

Malawi Broadcasting Corporation

Logo: mbc.mw3

Malawian state-run radio company

The Malawi Broadcasting Corporation is a state-run radio and television company in Malawi.2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

1964Founded1
  • Founded inBlantyre1
  • Websitembc.mw
  • Legal formstate-owned enterprise1
Malawi Broadcasting Corporation - Zomba Studio 2012 (sq cropped)
Photo: chris_freiburg, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons5

The Malawi Broadcasting Corporation is a state-run radio and television company in Malawi.2

The story

Radio was introduced to Malawi, then the British colony of Nyasaland, in 1941, when the Information Department of the government of neighbouring Northern Rhodesia, another British colony, installed a 300-watt transmitter in its capital, Lusaka, to provide a service to all African citizens of the Rhodesian region, Radio Lusaka, in both English and local African languages. Since Northern Rhodesia could not afford such a specialist service alone, the administrators of Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland were soon persuaded to share the costs, while the British government agreed to provide share capital; thus the Central African Broadcasting Station (CABS) was born.

In 1953 the United Kingdom created the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland with Salisbury (now Harare, Zimbabwe) as its capital; The Southern Rhodesian Broadcasting Service, which operated in Southern Rhodesia for European listeners, was subsequently renamed the "Federal Broadcasting Service" (FBS).

In 1958 FBS and CABS formed the Federal Broadcasting Corporation (FBC).

MBC was founded in 1964 empowered by an act of parliament. It has two radio stations, Radio 1 and Radio 2, and transmits on FM, Medium Wave and Shortwave frequencies and Online and MBC 2 Malawi.

It also runs the national television station, Television Malawi.

Its headquarters is in Blantyre.

The MBC provided the maintenance for the relays of the BBC World Service in the country for BBC after 2001.

In 2021 the Malawi Human Rights Commission required the MBC to pay compensation after Stella Twea found that the former CEO, Aubrey Sumbuleta, had sexually harassed women staff members. Lawyer Sarai Chisala said that the Corporation itself was liable because they had known about the problem, but they had allowed the abuse to continue.

From Wikipedia’s article on Malawi Broadcasting Corporation, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4

Timeline

  1. 1964Founded Founded in Blantyre1