The Malawi 2002 food crisis: the rural development challenge

Abstract

The recent food crisis in Malawi has drawn stark attention to the failures of development policies over the last forty years to create wealth and develop a robust economy or the markets on which such an economy must depend. Current market liberalisation policies have achieved at best mixed success in addressing the generic problems inhibiting smallholder agricultural development : low returns to farmers' and service providers' investments, with high risks from natural shocks, price variations, coordination failure and opportunistic behaviour. Postindependence institutional mechanisms in Malawi were more successful in addressing some of these problems, in particular those of coordination risk, although external and internal difficulties led to increasing costs and declining effectiveness of these mechanisms, and to their collapse. They do provide, however, important lessons about the different failures of both market intervention and market liberalisation policies. We suggest and discuss a set of critical elements needed for economic development and wealth creation in poor rural areas, and propose four basic principles to guide the search for, and design and implementation of, effective rural development strategies and policies.

Linking agricultural development to school feeding in sub-Saharan Africa: Theoretical perspectives

“…providing research, extension and credit) are "weak" and many rural areas are poorly served by transportation and communications infrastructure (Poulton et al 2006). This analysis can be seen in terms of coordination risk, which Dorward and Kydd (2004) define as "the risk of failure of one player's investment due to the possible absence of complementary investments by other players in different stages in the supply chain." Coordination risk is particularly prevalent where there are thin markets and weak institutions.…”

Market institutions and urban food supply in West and Southern Africa

“…Harrigan (2003:860) concludes that despite market liberalization, "product and factor markets remain fragmented and unreliable…Private traders face transport, credit, storage, and information constraints with scale-related barriers, meaning that trade is dominated by petty traders". Dorward and Kydd (2004) emphasise that the marked growth in petty trade in Malawi in recent years is mainly a response to declining traditional sources of income, rather than the result of growing local consumer markets. This point is also stressed by Peters (2005:341), who observes that after 15 years of operation, private traders remain "overwhelmingly small-scale and opportunistic".…”

“…This has been a major issue in Zambia since the food trade was finally properly liberalised in the 1990s (Republic of Zambia, 2001;Seshamani, 1998). Similar problems have arisen in Malawi (Harrigan, 1991(Harrigan, , 2003Dorward and Kydd 2004). Harrigan (2003:860) concludes that despite market liberalization, "product and factor markets remain fragmented and unreliable…Private traders face transport, credit, storage, and information constraints with scale-related barriers, meaning that trade is dominated by petty traders".…”

Using a migration systems approach to understand the link between climate change and urbanisation in Malawi

“…A relatively small shortfall in marketed supplies can cause major increases in food prices (Devereux, 2007). This is both a function of low productivity and because roads linking urban markets with commodity supply sources become impassable leading to shortages of good in urban areas (Dorward and Kydd, 2004). Rising commodity costs place a substantial burden on the urban population and are particularly burdensome as food expenditure makes up the biggest share of all urban household spending (Mkwambisi et al, 2011).…”

“…Rising commodity costs place a substantial burden on the urban population and are particularly burdensome as food expenditure makes up the biggest share of all urban household spending (Mkwambisi et al, 2011). Furthermore, agricultural markets are negatively affected by problems in transport and communications infrastructure (Dorward and Kydd, 2004), which become worse during a flood. At this time, the urban poor aim to cushion price shocks by reducing spending in other areas (Cohen and Garrett, 2010).…”