The African Lakes Corporation plc was a British company originally set-up in 1877 by Scottish businessmen to co-operate with Presbyterian missions in what is now Malawi.
Despite its original connections with the Free Church of Scotland, it operated its businesses in Africa on a commercial rather than a philanthropic basis.
It had political ambitions in the 1880s to control part of Central Africa and engaged in armed conflict with Swahili traders.
The latter arose because it had difficulty supplying promptly the range of acceptable trade goods needed to exchange for ivory, and because it could not compete with Swahili traders.
[4] The company established trading posts at locations along the shores of Lake Nyasa and in the Lower Shire Valley in the late 1870s and early 1880s.
Its managers, the Moir brothers, concentrated on trading ivory rather than cash crops but faced stiff completion from Swahili traders.
[5]: 49 By 1886, the company's relationship with Mlozi and other Swahili traders deteriorated, partly because of its delays in providing suitable trade goods, and its unwillingness to supply guns and ammunition, but partly as the Swahili traders turned more to slaving, and began to attack Ngonde communities that the company had promised to protect.
[6] The company gave up any ambition to control the Shire Highlands in 1886, as local missionaries protested that did not have the capacity to police this area effectively.
The company was said to have made almost no effort to develop its lands, but had sold off some of it to plantations, and local people were concerned that there would be further sales.
[7]: 151–157 The company's ambition to become chartered in 1886 was strongly opposed by local missionaries, and it was deemed incapable of administering the area around Lake Nyasa by the British government.
The colloquially name Mandala reputedly derived from the spectacles worn by John Moir, which reflected light like a pool of water.
[5]: 83–4, 178 The company's original base in Blantyre, Mandala House, still exists and is a National Monument and the oldest building in Malawi.
[14] During the 1980s and in order to utilise Advance corporation tax (ACT) paid on dividends to shareholders, the Company acquired several profitable motor dealerships in the United Kingdom.
Ultimately in order to sustain the cash required for its early-stage internet operations and its projected expansion the Company was forced, in the absence of new capital, to dispose any assets it could to raise money.