Nkhotakota
human settlement in Malawi

Nkhotakota (N-kho-tah-kho-tuh) (formerly Kota Kota) (name derived from the Chichewa for "Corner Corner") is a town and one of the districts in the Central Region of Malawi. It is on the shore of Lake Malawi (formerly Lake Nyasa) and is one of the main ports on Lake Malawi. As of 2018, Nkhotakota had a population estimated at 28,350. The district had a population of 301,000.
History
Nkhotakota was originally a group of villages in the 19th century which later served as a market for Swahili-Arabian slave traders. David Livingstone convinced Chief Jumbe to stop trading slaves under a tree in Nkhotakota in the 19th century, which is currently in existence under a mission.
In 1905, Mary Hall came through here as she travelled to be the first woman to journey from Cape Town to Cairo. She had arrived from Mangochi.
Malawi president Hastings Banda gave speeches under another tree in Nkhotakota during the 1960s, this one ironically known as the Livingstone Tree. This town was hit by the 2001 floods, and was the worst hit area of Malawi's Central region.
The public source identifies “Nkhotakota” as human settlement in Malawi. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Nkhotakota, human and settlement.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1022510. VIAF identifies the subject as 133744729. The Library of Congress control number is n84173533. Authority coordinates are -12.917, 34.300. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2018, 1905 and 2001.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nkhotakota” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.