Malawi has received international media attention as a potential model for a uniquely African green revolution following the success of its fertiliser subsidy programme. The role of young people has not featured at all in this success story, although more than half of the population is considered young. Meanwhile, the government's Green Belt Initiative is planning to give land to large‐scale local and foreign investors for irrigated agriculture along Lake Malawi and major rivers to consolidate food security gains. The concern is that vast tracks of land are being appropriated from smallholder farmers whose land ownership averages only 0.5 hectare. This article explores how young people are engaging with these initiatives in terms of their roles and what they perceive as potential alternative livelihood strategies within the agri‐food sector. It argues that young people are marginalised from these successes because of stalled land reforms and absence of a supportive policy environment.
The food crisis of 2007/8, alongside rapid population growth, and the uncertainties of climate change propelled African agricultural transformation back into the development mainstream. New narratives of 'climate-smart agriculture' and 'sustainable intensification' underlie this contemporary transformation. We present a political economy analysis of agricultural policy and livelihoods in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia, and use this to assess the challenge of achieving 'sustainable and inclusive intensification'. We find little evidence that agricultural institutions have the capacity to deliver sustainable intensification in agriculture, or that agricultural policy drives changes in agricultural livelihoods that will make them either more sustainable or inclusive.
Despite the youth accounting for more than half of the population of Malawi, they have been marginalized and pushed to the periphery of several development policy interventions. This article interrogates the question of how the youth and policy-makers view agricultural development as a means of social mobility for youth in Malawi. The paper argues that even though agricultural production is the main occupation in Malawi, young people do not value agriculture as a means of upward social mobility. Furthermore, youth and agriculture policy frameworks provide little support to youth in terms of access to affordable farm inputs, land, extension services, value addition initiatives, and markets. It is argued that Malawi is missing the strategic policy direction by not implementing non-traditional agriculture interventions that would engage the youth in a bid to reduce massive youth unemployment.
The paper discusses participation of the public in local councils in Malawi in the context that Malawi has had no councillors since 2005. The paper is based on empirical evidence collected through a largely qualitative research design. It adopts a case study approach focusing on Lilongwe District Council and Balaka Town Council. The study has established that the absence of councillors in Malawi has negatively affected the participation of the public in local public machinery. Analysis of the empirical evidence indicates that in the absence of councillors, (i) local people are detached from councils because of a political leadership vacuum that has been created, (ii) withdrawal of formal policy spaces has culminated in the weakening of voices from below, (iii) power struggles among the actors sitting in for councillors impairs them for motivating people to participate in local public life at the council, and (iv) the interim participatory structures have ended up being patronage oriented rather than community-serving oriented as envisaged. The paper holds the view that, in the absence of councillors, participation in local public affairs is largely limited to the people that are connected to the influential political and social figures and networks.
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