Country profile - MWI

Corruption in Malawi

13 sub-national regions - 1995-2022. Latest country-level SCI: 28.6 (2022).

Grand: 25.7 Petty: 15.1 Latest observed: 2016

Malawi: key corruption facts

The most corrupt region of Malawi is Blantyre (22.2/100), and the least corrupt is Kasungu (35.2/100), on a 0-100 scale where 0 is most corrupt and 100 is least. All 13 regions are ranked below.

  • In 2022, Malawi's national Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) was 28.6/100, on a scale where 0 is the most corrupt and 100 the least corrupt.
  • Most corrupt region: Blantyre (SCI 22.2/100, 2022).
  • Least corrupt region: Kasungu (SCI 35.2/100, 2022).
  • Grand corruption (SGCI): 25.7/100; petty corruption (SPCI): 15.1/100 (last directly observed in 2016).
  • Trend: Malawi's SCI moved from 31.4/100 (1995) to 28.6/100 (2022).
  • Coverage: 13 regions, 1995–2022. Source: Subnational Corruption Database (Crombach & Smits, 2024, Nature Scientific Data), CC BY 4.0.

How Malawi compares: SCD vs. the CPI and World Bank

The Subnational Corruption Index is scored 0–100 on the same orientation as Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (higher = cleaner). The difference: the CPI and the World Bank measure the perceptions of experts and business executives and report one national number, while the SCI is built from what ordinary households perceive and experience — and it breaks Malawi into 13 regions.

Index Latest Scale Based on
Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) 28.6 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Households — perception & experience
Transparency International CPI 34 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Experts & business surveys
World Bank Control of Corruption -0.6 ≈ −2.5 to 2.5 Aggregated expert sources

Most recent year — SCI 2022, CPI 2022, CCI 2022. The SCD also publishes region-anchored SUB-CPI and SUB-CCI series so the CPI and World Bank measures can be read at the regional level.

SCI trajectory - 1995-2022

Country-level mean of the Subnational Corruption Index, averaged across all 13 regions. Higher values mean cleaner governance (0 = most corrupt, 100 = least corrupt).

33 23 1995 2022

Source: SCD v1.0 (Comprehensive Dataset). Years where the panel was filled by inter/extrapolation are included in the country mean.

Regions (13)

Each row is a sub-national region with its latest SCI score. Click into any row for the region's full time series.

# Region GDL code Years Latest SCI
1 Blantyre MWIr101 1995-2022 22.2
2 Other northern (Chitipa, Karonga, Rumphi, Nkhata Bay) MWIr111 1995-2022 25.5
3 Zomba MWIr108 1995-2022 25.7
4 Thyolo MWIr107 1995-2022 26.5
5 Machinga MWIr103 1995-2022 27.1
6 Mulanje MWIr110 1995-2022 27.6
7 Lilongwe MWIr109 1995-2022 27.7
8 Mzimba MWIr105 1995-2022 28.6
9 Mangochi MWIr104 1995-2022 29.7
10 Other central (Nkhota Kota, Mchinji, Dowa, Ntchisi, Dedza, Ntcheu) MWIr112 1995-2022 29.8
11 Salima MWIr106 1995-2022 31.1
12 Other southern (Balaka, Mwanza, Phalombe, Chiradzulu, Chikwawa, Nsanje, neno) MWIr113 1995-2022 34.3
13 Kasungu MWIr102 1995-2022 35.2

Download Malawi

Per-country panel slice in CSV format. Columns: iso, country, gdl, region, year, sci. Direct dataset citations should reference the Figshare deposit (see How to cite).

Download MWI.csv