Mzuzu University sits about 8 km north of the city centre in a parkland campus carved from miombo woodland. It is the second of Malawi's four public universities (after Chancellor College in Zomba), founded in 1997 to provide higher education in the country's underserved Northern Region. The campus has around 8,000 students across faculties of education, environmental sciences, health sciences, and information science.
For visitors, the university's main draw is its art and culture department, which puts on regular performances of traditional dance and choral music. The library is open to the public for reference use and has a strong Malawi collection — useful if you are travelling with a research interest. The campus bookshop is worth a stop for academic texts on Malawian history and politics that are hard to find elsewhere.