Malawi

Economy, Society and Political Affairs

Matthias Rompel, Reimer Gronemeyer, Matthias Rompel, Reimer Gronemeyer

• Éditeur: Zed Books
• Année: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781786995896
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Social Sciences
• Sous-sujet: Global Development Studies

Malawi is one of the poorest countries on the globe. Subsistence agriculture remains at the very heart of its social fabric, and also lies at the root of its tremendous poverty. Yet while Malawi is among the worst performers in terms of per capita income and infant mortality, it is also a surprising leader in other areas (such as freedom of the press), has enjoyed over fifty years of relative stability since independence, and still holds great potential for economic development. Bringing together some of the leading experts on the country, this collection offers a comprehensive introduction to contemporary Malawi, encompassing its economy, culture, and politics. An invaluable resource for scholars and development professionals alike, the book assesses the root causes of Malawi's impoverishment, and also offers insight into how the country might break out of its development impasse.

1

Malawi five decades after independence: failed state or latecomer?

Matthias Rompel

Introduction

Malawi is a landlocked country in south-east Africa, sharing borders with Mozambique, Zambia, and Tanzania. It has an estimated population of 17.5 million (NSO, 2018: 8). Malawi’s topography is characterized by the Great Rift Valley, which runs through the country and formed Lake Malawi. The lake is about 560 kilometres long and is the fourth largest freshwater lake on the planet. It covers one-fifth of the surface of the country.

The economy of Malawi is strongly based on agriculture, relatively undiversified, and highly vulnerable to external shocks.

Poverty remains widespread in the country. In terms of gross income per capita Malawi was rated as the poorest country in the world, with a gross national income per capita (GNI) of 250 US dollars, by the World Bank in July 2015. Per capita income has grown at an average of little more than 1.5 per cent between 1995 and 2014, below the average of 2.8 per cent for non-resource-rich African economies (IMF, 2017: 2).

The poverty rate is not only consistently high compared to other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, it is also declining at a slower pace over time. It declined insignificantly from some 54 per cent in 1998 to 52.4 per cent in 2005 and to 50.7 per cent in 2011, and – with a slight increase – to 51.5 per cent in 2016 (Tostensen, 2017: xiv; IMF 2017: 2).

More recently, and given the external shocks of large-scale floods in 2015, a major drought in 2016, and the impact of cyclone Idai in 2019, poverty has at best stabilized, if not increased. According to a recent World Bank macro-poverty forecast, poverty in Malawi measured by the population living below the international poverty line of USD 1.90 per person per day has only slightly been reduced between 2010 and 2018 – from 70.9 per cent in 2010 to 69.6 per cent in 2018 (World Bank, 2019: 53).

Severe humanitarian crises in recent years further illustrate the rather volatile situation: In the peak of the lean season 2016/17 6.7 million citizens, more than a third of the population, were dependent on food-aid (EIU, 2019).

Before its independence from British rule in 1964, Malawi was known as Nyasaland. Looking back at the history since the declaration of independence, it is remarkable that the country has (continuously) been on a peaceful trajectory with stable and democratic governments. In the first decades after gaining independence, power was concentrated on one man, the founding president Kamuzu Hastings Banda. Banda ruled for 30 years with a strong hand. The one-party rule of Banda ended in 1993. Since then the country has held six multi-party presidential and parliamentary elections, the latest in May 2019.

Malawi’s ranking on the Human Development Index (HDI), which is a multi-dimensional measurement of social and economic development indices, is rather sobering: Malawi is ranked 171th out of 189 in the category ‘low human development’ (UNDP, 2018). The HDI is below average and in the ‘low human development’ category, and well below average amongst all sub-Saharan African countries. Close to Malawi in the rankings are countries like Ivory Coast (170) and Djibouti (172). There has been no substantial improvement over recent years and decades in Malawi’s position in the index.

Corruption and clientelism are major problems in the country. The Corruption Perception Index of Transparency International places Malawi in the lowest third of countries, ranking 120th out of 180 (Transparency International, 2018).

Despite being among the lower ends of these global rankings, the country is a surprise leader on other indices: Freedom of press is one of these domains. The country enjoys a public discourse, which is relatively independent from political influence. Media houses can criticize government and its actors openly – even the president – without being threatened. A 2012 survey of the Afrobarometer reported that 79 per cent of Malawians said they were completely free to say what they thought without fear. This was the highest score of all 34 surveyed African countries (Eidhammer, 2017: 3).

Furthermore, progress can be recorded in certain domains of social development. Enrolment rates in primary education have steadily increased over the years. Between 2004 and 2013, the proportion of school-age children attending primary school increased from 53 to 61 per cent, and the proportion of households with a member who had completed primary school rose from 41 to 52 per cent – both significant increases. However, the biggest education challenge is low transition rates from primary to secondary school and the low quality of the education offered (ICAI, 2016: 19).

Also, the rate of childhood malnutrition has steadily declined. The rate of stunting in rural areas declined from 54 per cent in 2004 to 39 in 2015, and the overall proportion of underweight children declined from 18 to 12 per cent. However, the figures remain on a relatively high level (Dabalen etal., 2017; WFP and UNECA, 2015).

Life expectancy went up to 64.2 years in 2018 from 62.8 in 2016 (and from 37.8 years in 1960).

The total fertility rate went down to 4.4 children per woman from 6.7 between 1992 and 2015/16 (Tostensen, 2017: 41).

A major success is the decline in the rate of under-five infant mortality, which declined from 133 to 64 deaths per 1000 live births (NSO, 2016: 21). Other sources suggest that the decline in both these rates may have been even more significant.

With these positive achievements in the areas of health, nutrition, and education, Malawi achieved four out of eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015.

Phases of post-independent development

Booth etal. have grouped the time since independence into three major phases of economic development: (i) 1964–1979, (ii) 1980–1998, (iii) 1999–present (Booth etal., 2006: 4). However, Booth etal.’s analysis was published in 2006. So we might extend the proposed third phase of 1999–2014, and add another phase from 2015 on. By doing this, the following phases of economic development in Malawi can be described.¹

1964 to 1979: the early years

The first phase from independence to the late 1970s was characterized by rapid economic growth. Annual GDP growth was on average above 5 per cent and GDP per capita more than doubled. The growth was mainly based on the agricultural sector, promoted by an agricultural development strategy by the government and mainly driven by estates – as opposed to smallholder agriculture (Booth etal., 2006: 4).

The Agricultural Development and Marketing Cooperation (ADMARC), a state-owned agricultural agency formed in 1971, thrived with a trading surplus out of tobacco, cotton, and groundnuts, but at the cost of smallholders. Revenue was invested in estates. Smallholders remained mainly on similar economic levels as pre-independence, while population growth already started to reduce the available land.

Even in those early days, a significant private sector was already virtually non-existent. Population at the time of independence was about 3.9 million inhabitants.

1980 to 1998: economic shocks

The second phase in the 1980s and 1990s was characterized by economic liberalization. While there was a short episode of further GDP growth in the early 1980s (1982–1985), until the mid-1990s, growth levelled around 2.5 per cent per annum. Combined with the population growth, this led to a decline of GDP per capita to one of the lowest levels in Africa. Availability of land and average size of landholdings for smallholders further shrunk.

Structural challenges continued not to be addressed in a tangible manner. In general, economic and development policy were marked by inconsistencies and lack of long-term strategy. Public expenditure moved away from infrastructure and towards social sectors.

In 1994 a democratic constitution was passed into law, and the founding president Kamuzu Banda was voted out of power in the first democratic elections. Bakili Muluzi was elected president. At the onset of his first term, free primary education was introduced and enrolment rates picked up substantially, but at the cost of quality of education.

Income distribution worsened in the 1980s and 1990s: By 1995 Malawi’s Gini coefficient had risen to 0.62 – the third highest in the world at that time after Brazil and Namibia (Booth etal., 2006: 5).

1999 to 2014: from shock to frequent cris...

Table des matières

• Cover Page
• Politics and Development in Contemporary Africa
• About the editors
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• About the contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Malawi Five Decades after Independence: Failed State or Latecomer?
• 2. Malawi’s Rocky Route to Democratic Consolidation
• 3. The Macroeconomic and Political Foundations of Endemic Poverty in Malawi
• 4. Public Financial Management and its Linkages with the Broader Governance Reform Agenda: The Snail Pace of Reform
• 5. Religion and Politics in Malawi: A Critical Stock-Taking
• 6. Maize and Malnutrition in Malawi: Food Crisis, Farmers’ Knowledge, and Climate Change
• 7. Agriculture, Biofuels, and Strategies for Food Security in Malawi
• 8. Tourism Development in Malawi: Rankings and Realities
• Index