A joint council of Ministers meeting on the boundary demarcation has revealed that thousands of pillars and maps covering the joint common boundary have been built.

Zambians and Malawians have lived as neighbours for centuries.  Infact people of the two nations are known to be one people sharing common languages and culture, but separated by the colonial administrators, under the demarcation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.

The separation of countries through borders in Africa was introduced during the colonial times, but after many countries gained Independence, the separation sparked many disputes and conflicts.

Zambia and Malawi have been having their share of boundary conflict since 1982 and in 2004 the African Union Commission directed all countries with outstanding border disputes to clearly mark their boundaries by the end of 2010, but the deadline was not met.

At the opening of the Council of Ministers’ Meeting on Zambia Malawi boundary demarcation in Livingstone yesterday Zambia’s Lands and Natural Resources Minister Elijah Muchima thanked the African Union and the government of German for the support rendered.

He implored the governments of Malawi and Zambia to continue providing more resources as much more work is still to be undertaken before the signing of the boundary treaty between the two nations.

Malawi started with the physical demarcation of borderlines on a pilot basis in 1993 and boundary inspections have been carried out since then.

In some re-demarcation exercise, some parts of Malawi including Mchinji, Mzimba, Kasungu, and Rumphi districts were declared as belonging to Zambia.

And in his remarks Malawi Local Government Minister Richard Banda said the people of Malawi and Zambia have lived peacefully together even before the colonial administrators separated them.

He expressed confidence that even though the new demarcations may show one area to have belonged to the other, the two peoples will continue living in harmony, because they are one.

The 976 kilometre land boundary between the two countries was first established as an internal British colonial border in the late nineteenth century.

The frontier runs generally north-to-south, following the drainage divide between the Zambezi River and Lake Malawi also known as Lake Nyasa.

After independence, Zambia and Malawi created a joint Survey Commission to address the lack of a detailed boundary definition.

Bilateral demarcation efforts were completed in 2011.

Since then, the two countries maintain an active demarcation commission with occasional new boundary survey efforts.

--ChannelAfrica/Hilda Akekelwa--