Blantyre and East Africa Ltd

Blantyre and East Africa Ltd is a company that was incorporated in Scotland in 1898 and is still in existence. Its main activity was the ownership of estates in the south of what is now Malawi. The main estate crops it grew were tobacco until the 1950s and tea, which it continued to grow until the company’s tea estates were sold.

Blantyre and East Africa Ltd was one of four large estate-owning companies in colonial Nyasaland which together owned over 3,400,000 acres (1,400,000 ha) of land, including the majority of the fertile land in the Shire Highlands. The company acquired most of its landholdings between 1898 and 1901 from several early European settlers, whose title to this land had been recognised by Certificates of Claim issued by the administration of the British Central Africa Protectorate.

After the boom in Europeans growing tobacco ended around 1927, the company retained a single large estate in Zomba District where its tenants were encouraged to grow tobacco, and others where it grew tea. It also rented out a scattering of small estates to African tenants, which were crowded and unsupervised. Many such estates, apart from the tea estates which it continued to manage directly, were sold to the colonial administration of Nyasaland between 1950 and 1955.