British lawyer, hunter, soldier, and colonial administrator. Alfred Sharpe was the youngest son of Edmund Sharpe, the architect and engineer. He came to Nyasaland (Malawi) in 1887 from Fiji, where he briefly held an appointment as a colonial magistrate, to hunt elephants and trade in ivory. Almost immediately he became involved in the war between the African Lakes Corporation and Arab slave traders, and when the British declared Nyasaland a protectorate in 1891 he was appointed Vice-Consul on a salary paid by the British South African Company.

He spent the next six years on treaty-making expeditions from the Shire Highlands to Luangwa River, seeking African allegiance to British colonization and promises to renounce the slave trade, by the end of which he had succeeded in bringing most of the area west of Lake Nyasa under the administration of the Chartered Corporation. In 1897 he succeeded Sir Harry Johnston as governor and in 1903 he was knighted. While in Malawi he was a collector of butterflies and plants.

Long after his retirement to Lancashire in 1910, he kept himself abreast of the political situation in the region, and wrote letters to The Times on African affairs. He also continued to publish accounts in the journal of the Royal Geographical Society, which had earned him the Cuthbert Peek award in 1898. From 1912 to 1914 he made extensive travels in central Africa, which he describes in his book The Backbone of Africa, a record of travel during the great war, with some suggestions for administrative reform (1921). In 1919 he made a special visit to Liberia to assess its economic potential. He made his final trip in 1923 when, aged 70, he hiked from Lake Nyasa to the coast at Lindi, although at the time of his death, he was making plans for another visit to Nyasaland. His portrait is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Sources:
1936, The Geographical Journal, 87(2): 190H. Wild, 1960, Biographical Notes on Botanical Collections in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Comptes Rendu de la Réunion Pléniere de l'Aetfat, 4: 161-173
1998, The New Encyclopaedia Britannica (Micropaedia), 10: 704.