Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T10:21:07.500Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Modern Agricultural History in Malawi: Perspectives on Policy-Choice Explanations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2013

Erik Green
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

Development research is often associated with issues of policy. Researchers aim to increase our contextual and theoretical knowledge to enhance the creation of “good” development policies. One way of doing this is to identify and learn from harmful policies of the past. The objective of this article is to examine such policy-choice explanations by looking at the dominant understandings of the modern history of agriculture in Malawi. These perspectives share the view that the high level of rural poverty is, to a great extent, an outcome of the agricultural policies implemented by the colonial and postcolonial governments. Of crucial importance are the mechanisms whereby the state actively tried to transfer resources from the smallholder sector to the state or to the estate sector. This had a negative impact on the production capacity of the smallholder sector. This article notes that the focus on policies alone is not a sufficient approach to understand the dynamics and limitations of the smallholder sector. The article also points to some methodological weaknesses with policy-choice explanations that are relevant for development research in general.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , December 2007 , pp. 115 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Colonial Office (CO) 525/208/4432. Confidential Dispatch no. 28, May 18, 1949. London: Public Record Office.Google Scholar
Colonial Office (CO) 525/207/4432. Dispatch no. 37 from the Governor of Nyasaland to the Secretary of State for Colonies. London: Public Record Office.Google Scholar
Arulpragsam, Jehan, and Sahn, David E.. 1991. Development through Dualism? Land Tenure Policy and Poverty in Malawi. Washington, D.C.: CFNPP Publications.Google Scholar
Baker, Colin. 1975. “Tax Collection in Malawi: An Administrative History.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 8: 40–62.10.2307/217485CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bates, Robert. 1981. States and Markets in Tropical Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bates, Robert. 1983. Essays on the Political Economy of Rural Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press.10.1017/CBO9780511558740CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berry, Sara. 1993. “Understanding Agricultural Policy in Africa: The Contributions of Robert Bates.” World Development 21: 1055–63.10.1016/0305-750X(93)90061-DCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bryceson, Deborah, and Fonesca, Jodie. 2005. “Risking Death for Survival: Peasant Responses to Hunger and HIV/AIDS in Malawi.” Paper presented at the IFPRI conference on HIV/AIDS, Food and Nutrition, Durban, April 14–16.Google Scholar
Chipende, Graham, and Vaughan, Megan. 1986. Women in the Estate Sector of Malawi: The Tea and Tobacco Industries. Switzerland: ILO.Google Scholar
Chirwa, Wiseman. 1994. “Alomwe and Mozambican Immigrant Labour in Colonial Malawi, 1890–1945.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 2 (3): 525–50.10.2307/220758CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chirwa, Chijere Wiseman. 1997. “Share-Cropping on the Shire Highlands Estates, 1920–1945.” In White Farms, Black Labor: The State and Agrarian Change in Southern Africa, edited by Jeeves, Alan H. et al. London: James Currey.Google Scholar
Christensen, Robert. 1984. “Financing Malawi's Development Strategy.” In Malawi: An Alternative Pattern of Developmen. Edinburgh: Center of African Studies.Google Scholar
Christensen, Robert, and Kydd, Jonathan. 1982. “Structural Change in Malawi since Independence: Consequences of a Development Strategy based on Large Scale Agriculture.” World Development 10 (5): 355–75.Google Scholar
Cornwall, Andrea. 2002. Beneficiary, Consumer, Citizen: Perspectives on Participation for Poverty Reduction. Sidastudies no. 2. Gothenburg: Elanders Novum AB.Google Scholar
Cowen, M. P., and Shenton, R. W.. 1996. Doctrines of Development. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Good, Kenneth. 1990 “The Direction of Agricultural Development in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi.” Studies in the Economic History of Southern Africa. Volume 1: The Front Line States, edited by Konczacki, Z. A. et al., 75–126. London: Frank Cass.Google Scholar
Green, Erik. 2002. “Kudziteteza ku njala—Liberalisation of the Agricultural Markets and Its Impact on the Smallholder Farmers: The Case of Malawi.” Lund: Department of Economic History.Google Scholar
Green, Erik. 2005. Peasant Production and Limits to Labour: Thyolo and Mzimba Districts in Malawi, Mid-1950s to Late 1970s. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International.Google Scholar
Karchenas, Massoud. 2004. “‘Urban Bias,’ Intersectoral Resources Flows and the Macroeconomic Implications of Agrarian Relations: The Historical Experience of Japan and Taiwan.” Journal ofAgrarian Changed 4: 170–98.10.1111/j.1471-0366.2004.00077.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kydd, Jonathan. 1984. “Malawi in the 1970s: Development Policies and Economic Change.” In Malawi: An Alternative Pattern of Development. Edinburgh: Center of African Studies.Google Scholar
Lele, Uma, and Meyers, Richard. 1989. Growth and Structural Change in East Africa: Domestic Policies, Agricultural Performance, and the World Bank Assistance, 1963–86. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.Google Scholar
Lipton, Michael. 1993. “‘Urban Bias’: Of Consequences, Classes and Causality.” Journal of Development Studies 23: 229–58.10.1080/00220389308422301CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malawi National Statistical Office. 1966. Malawi Population Census 1966. Zomba: Government of Malawi.Google Scholar
Mandala, Elias C. 1990. Work and Control in a Peasant Economy: A History of the Lower Tchiri Valley in Malawi, 1859–1960. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
McCracken, John. 1983. “Planters, Peasants and the Colonial State: The Impact of the Native Tobacco Board in the Central Province of Malawi.” Journal of Southern African Studies 9: 172–92.10.1080/03057078308708056CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCracken, John. 1985. “Share-Cropping in Malawi: The Visiting Tenant System in the Central Province, c. 1920–1968.” In Malawi: An Alternative Pattern of Development. Edinburgh: Center of African Studies.Google Scholar
Mhone, Guy. 1992. “The Political Economy of Malawi: An Overview.” In Malawi at the Crossroads: The Postcolonial Political Economy, edited by Mhone, Guy. Bulawayo: Sapes Books.Google Scholar
Mkandawire, M. Richard. 1992. “Land Question and Agrarian Change in Malawi.” In Malawi at the Crossroads: The Postcolonial Political Economy, edited by Mhone, Guy. Bulawayo: Sapes Books.Google Scholar
Mkandawire, Thandika. 2001. “Thinking about Development States in Africa.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 25: 289–314.10.1093/cje/25.3.289CrossRefGoogle Scholar
National Statistical Office. 1966. Malawi Population Census. Zomba: Government Press.Google Scholar
Ng'ong'ola, Clement. 1986. “Malawi's Agricultural Economy and the Evolution of Legislation on Production and Marketing of Peasant Economic Crops.” Journal of Southern African Studies 17: 240–62.10.1080/03057078608708123CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ng'ong'ola, Clement. 1990. “The State, Settlers and Indigenes in the Evolution of Land Law and Policy in Colonial Malawi.” International Journal of African Historical Studies 23: 27–58.10.2307/219980CrossRefGoogle Scholar
North, C. Douglass 1995. “The New Institutional Economics and Third World Development.” In Harris, John et al., eds., The New Institutional Economics and Third World Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.4324/9780203444290.pt1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pachai, Bridgal. 1973. “Land Policies in Malawi: An Examination of the Colonial Legacy.” Journal of African History 14 (4): 681–98.10.1017/S0021853700013116CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palmer, Robin. 1985. “White Farmers in Malawi: Before and After the Depression.” African Affairs 84 (335): 211–45.10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a097681CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sindima, Harvey J. 2002. Malawi's First Republic: An Economic and Political Analysis. Boston: University Press of America Google Scholar
Vail, Leroy. 1975. “The Making of an Imperial Slum: Nyasaland and its Railways, 1895–1935.” Journal of African History 16 (1): 89–112.10.1017/S0021853700014122CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vail, Leroy. 1983. “The State and the Creation of Colonial Malawi's Agriculture Economy.” In Imperialism, Colonialism and Hunger: East and Central Africa, edited by Rotberg, Robert. Toronto: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Vaughan, Megan. 1982 “Food Production and Family Labour in Southern Malawi: The Shire Highlands and the Upper Shire Valley in the Early Colonial Period.” The Journal of African History 23 (3): 351–64.10.1017/S002185370002096XCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vaughan, Megan. 1987. The Story of an African Famine: Gender and Famine in the Twentieth Century Malawi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511549885CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vaughan, Megan. 1998. “Exploitation and Neglect: Rural Producers and the State in Malawi and Zambia.” In History of Central Africa: The Contemporary Years Since 1960, edited by Birmingham, David and Phyllis, Martin M.. Harlow: Addison Wesley Longman.Google Scholar
World Bank. 2001. World Development Indicators 2000. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.Google Scholar