Abstract
In Malawi, higher education is regarded as an important component of the entire education system because of its role in creating new knowledge and skills through teaching and research. This article is part of the large study which was aimed at understanding the developments in higher education in Malawi, considering the increase in number of universities and diversed ownership in higher education sector. It was a qualitative study which sampled six universities and used the in-depth interviewing technique to collect data. Ground theory was used to analyse the data.It was found that almost all strategies, programmes and courses in the higher education sector are replicated. However, the results still suggest that competitive strategy influences both competitive advantage and higher education business sustainability.All the universities in the study had strategy development as a continuous process and remain part of strategic component in the higher education management. Therefore, this article recommends that competitive strategy development and implementation should be contextualised because some competition forces recommended in literature are not applicable in the higher education sector.