The Politics and Economics of Institutional Change in Land Tenure
Agriculture remains the mainstay of the Malawian economy, providing livelihoods to more than 80 percent of the population. It is not therefore surprising that government development strategies have stressed agricultural development as a vehicle for achieving pro-poor growth in Malawi. Land therefore becomes a critical variable in achieving such growth given the declining land-holding due to sub-division of customary land among family members. In 2004, in order to improve access to land, the Malawi government introduced a land reform programme that involved the titling of customary land into customary estates and a market-based land redistribution and resettlement programme, targeting the landless or near-landless. The land reform project is being piloted in four districts in Southern Malawi: Thyolo, Mulanje, Machinga and Mangochi. The resulting institutional changes provide opportunities to study the interactions of economic and political institutions (formal and informal) on land matters and how such interactions affect pro-poor growth.
IPPG commissioned a project by two Malawian researchers, Dr Ephraim Chirwa and Dr Blessings Chinsinga (Chancellor's College) to understand the political, social, cultural and economic institutions governing land matters and how they affect economic growth and income distribution. Specifically the work aims to investigate the politics of land reform and land administration, and to assess the impact of the land reform programme.
The Malawi Policy Brief, 'The economics and politics of land reforms in Malawi: a case study of the Community Based Rural Land Development Programme (CBRLDP)' was presented at a World Bank seminar on Land Reform, Food Security and Agricultural Productivity in Malawi on 17 December 2008, in the Lilongwe office, the report from the seminar is also available.
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Last modified: 31 March 2009