Package {mwmapdata}

Title: Spatial Boundary Data for Malawi Administrative Levels
Version: 1.0.0
Description: Provides official spatial boundary datasets for Malawi at multiple administrative levels: country (level 0), regions (level 1), districts (level 2), and traditional authorities (level 3). Also includes Lake Malawi boundary data. Boundary data are the Common Operational Datasets (COD-AB) sourced from the National Statistics Office of Malawi and distributed via the OCHA Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX), version 02 https://data.humdata.org/dataset/cod-ab-mwi. Intended for use with the 'mwmap' package or any spatial analysis workflow requiring Malawi administrative boundaries.
License: MIT + file LICENSE
Encoding: UTF-8
RoxygenNote: 7.3.3
Depends: R (≥ 3.5)
Imports: sf
Suggests: knitr, rmarkdown, testthat (≥ 3.0.0)
LazyData: true
LazyDataCompression: xz
URL: https://github.com/bitacanalytics/mwmapdata, https://github.com/bitacanalytics/mwmap
BugReports: https://github.com/bitacanalytics/mwmapdata/issues
Config/testthat/edition: 3
NeedsCompilation: no
Packaged: 2026-05-02 20:09:36 UTC; bitac
Author: Chifundo Bita [aut, cre]
Maintainer: Chifundo Bita <bitac.analytics@gmail.com>
Repository: CRAN
Date/Publication: 2026-05-06 11:20:02 UTC

Lake Malawi Boundary

Description

Spatial data for Lake Malawi, also known as Lake Nyasa.

Usage

major_lakes

Format

An sf object with 1 feature and Natural Earth lake attributes:

name

Lake name

name_alt

Alternative lake name

geometry

MULTIPOLYGON geometry for the lake boundary

Source

Natural Earth lake polygons

Legacy Malawi States Dataset

Description

Deprecated. Legacy district-level dataset retained for backwards compatibility. Please use mw_level_2 instead.

Usage

malawi_data

Format

An sf object equivalent to mw_level_2

Malawi Administrative Boundaries - Level 0 (Country)

Description

National boundary of Malawi at administrative level 0.

Usage

mw_level_0

Format

An sf object with 1 feature and 5 fields:

ADM0_EN

Country name (Malawi)

ADM0_PCODE

Country ISO code (MW)

area_sqkm

Area in square kilometres

center_lat

Centroid latitude

center_lon

Centroid longitude

geometry

MULTIPOLYGON geometry for the national boundary

Source

Malawi Spatial Data Platform (MASDAP) / OCHA HDX, version 2 (2023)

Malawi Administrative Boundaries - Level 1 (Regions)

Description

The three administrative regions of Malawi: Northern, Central, and Southern.

Usage

mw_level_1

Format

An sf object with 3 features and 7 fields:

ADM1_EN

Region name (Northern, Central, Southern)

ADM1_PCODE

Region code (MW1, MW2, MW3)

ADM0_EN

Country name

ADM0_PCODE

Country code

area_sqkm

Area in square kilometres

center_lat

Centroid latitude

center_lon

Centroid longitude

geometry

MULTIPOLYGON geometry for regional boundaries

Source

Malawi Spatial Data Platform (MASDAP) / OCHA HDX, version 2 (2023)

Malawi Administrative Boundaries - Level 2 (Districts)

Description

District-level administrative boundaries for all 32 districts of Malawi, including the four city districts (Blantyre City, Lilongwe City, Mzuzu City, Zomba City) added in the 2023 boundary update.

Usage

mw_level_2

Format

An sf object with 32 features and 12 fields:

ADM2_EN

District name (e.g., Lilongwe, Blantyre, Mzimba)

ADM2_PCODE

District code (e.g., MW201)

ADM1_EN

Region name

ADM1_PCODE

Region code

ADM0_EN

Country name

ADM0_PCODE

Country code

area_sqkm

Area in square kilometres

center_lat

Centroid latitude

center_lon

Centroid longitude

REGION

Region name (convenience alias for ADM1_EN)

DISTRICT

District name (convenience alias for ADM2_EN)

geometry

MULTIPOLYGON geometry for district boundaries

Source

Malawi Spatial Data Platform (MASDAP) / OCHA HDX, version 2 (2023)

Malawi Administrative Boundaries - Level 3 (Traditional Authorities)

Description

Traditional Authority (TA) level administrative boundaries representing third-level subdivisions within districts, governed by traditional leaders.

Usage

mw_level_3

Format

An sf object with 433 features and 16 fields:

ADM3_EN

Traditional Authority name

ADM3_PCODE

Traditional Authority code

ADM3_REF

Reference name for the Traditional Authority

ADM2_EN

District name

ADM2_PCODE

District code

ADM1_EN

Region name

ADM1_PCODE

Region code

ADM0_EN

Country name

ADM0_PCODE

Country code

area_sqkm

Area in square kilometres

center_lat

Centroid latitude

center_lon

Centroid longitude

REGION

Region name (convenience alias for ADM1_EN)

DISTRICT

District name (convenience alias for ADM2_EN)

TA

Traditional Authority name (convenience alias for ADM3_EN)

geometry

MULTIPOLYGON geometry for TA boundaries

Source

Malawi Spatial Data Platform (MASDAP) / OCHA HDX, version 2 (2023)

Check if mwmapdata spatial data is valid

Description

A utility to confirm that the spatial objects in mwmapdata are well-formed sf objects.

Usage

mwmapdata_check(x = mw_level_2)

Arguments

x

An sf object to check. Defaults to mw_level_2.

Value

Logical. TRUE if x is a valid sf object.

Examples

mwmapdata_check(mw_level_0)
mwmapdata_check(mw_level_2)