Best Malawi Festival – the Lake of Stars Festival is an annual three-day international festival held on the shores of Lake Malawi. Lake of Stars promotes Malawian arts and tourism through international interaction and exposure. Lake Malawi’s nickname of the Lake of Stars lends its title to this beautiful festival. The festival also includes talks, similar to TED talks, theatre, clowns, dance and mixed martial arts. The festival attracts thousands of attendees with musical acts from Africa and the United Kingdom, thrilling the people with global sounds from Afropop to folk to beat-boxing.
We also recommend our guide to Swaziland’s Bushfire Festival.
Shores of Lake Malawi thrilling Africa, and across Africa.
Will Jameson set up the Lake of Stars Project in 2003 to encourage international tourism to Malawi. The project uses cultural tourism to generate revenue and exposure for Malawi. The project was born from a desire to raise money for a developing economy, help promote Malawi as a tourist destination and expose Malawian artists to an international audience.
The majority of Lake of Stars staff are volunteers and the majority of performers get little to no pay. This festival generates over $1 million for the local economy. Attendees also visit orphanages to spend time with children and play games and sports with them.
Festival Figures for Lake of Stars 2015
- 79 Malawian acts performed at Lake of Stars 2015
- 81 artists and creative practitioners took part in 4 seminars and workshops
- 70+ volunteers from Malawi powered the festival working across a range of roles
- Over 1.6 million reached through our marketing campaign$1,468,119 million was generated
- 800 non-Malawian visitors attended so 34% of the ticket holding audience
Lake of Stars Music Festival is on break in 2017. The festival will return to Lake Malawi in September 2018 for the fifteenth anniversary.
Enjoy the pictures from the Best Malawi Festival – Lake of Stars Music Festival past years
Images courtesy of lakeofstars.org
