Malawi - Context and Land Governance

Malawi was invaded from all sides in the 19th century. Invaders included Swahili Arab traders and slavers from the north, and groupings displaced by social conflict along the eastern seaboard in South Africa, known as the mfecane – which resulted in the armed migrations by displaced Nguni/Ngoni groupings throughout the Southern African region.

Areas to the east and west of Lake Malawi were rapidly depopulated by slavery in the 1870’s and 1880’s. Several slave routes were established. These were controlled by Swahili Arab traders, as well as the Yao from Mozambique. The “total number of slaves brought to the (Mozambique) coast from the Malawi region was estimated in the early 1880s to be well in excess of 20,000 per annum” [7].  In the latter part of the 19th century most slaves were sent to French plantation islands and Madagascar. Despite the presence of abolitionist Presbyterian missionaries in Malawi from the 1870’s, slave exports to Madagascar and beyond “were vigorously maintained” until 1895 [8].   The missionaries were closely followed by European traders and land speculators who also settled in the territory from the 1870’s. They obtained large land and mining concessions, partly in exchange for promises of protection against slaving and associated violence.

Nyasaland (as Malawi was known before independence) was declared a British protectorate in 1891 which led to the abolition of slavery. In Malawi, as in other colonial settings, the British “recognised none of the signs of ‘property’ over land they were used to, labelled it terra nullius, and appropriated it as state territory”. However, the status as a Protectorate limited settler land appropriation compared to Southern Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe).
The new colonial administration imposed punitive taxes on the Malawian population and obtained labour to develop new agricultural estates through a harsh labour tenancy system known as thangata [9].   This was met with mounting, but unsuccessful resistance by Nyanja, Mang’anja and Yao groupings. Malawi eventually gained independence from Britain in 1964 and two years later President Banda oversaw changes to the constitution which established Malawi as a one-party state. In 1971 he was proclaimed president for life.

Similar to President Khama in Botswana, President Banda was dismissive of customary tenure. Reforms introduced in 1967 construed land “as a commodity to be governed by market forces which encouraged entrepreneurs to acquire portions of communal land and convert them into their own private lands” [10].  
The World Bank sponsored the Lilongwe Land Development Programme implemented between 1960 and 1980. This set out to “modernise land tenure” [11] and record individual rights. While this initiative recognised the matrilineal system of land rights, it decided to title the lineal land in the name of the senior brother or ‘guardian’ of the localised lineage, known as mbumba, literally meaning group of sisters. Some of these men subsequently treated the land as their personal property, which led to such resistance by other lineal members, that the programme came to an end.

Between independence and the late 1970s, a dual agricultural structure privileged the estate sector which exported tobacco, tea and sugar, while the smallholder subsector was restricted to food crop production cultivated on customary land and sold at controlled prices to the government marketing board. These restrictions created a hidden subsidy to the estates [12]  which “grew at an average of 17 %      per annum over the period 1964-1977, while the smallholder sub-sector grew at an average rate of 3 %      per annum (well below the rate needed just to maintain food needs) [13]. 

A combination of factors saw many of the estates fail by the early 1980’s, and from 1981 Malawi entered the era of economic structural adjustment. Malawi suffered many of the problems of severe liberalization and adjustment as in other African countries. But the removal of Dr Banda’s ban on smallholder burley tobacco production in the early 1990s proved a boon to those who took up the crop and led to burley becoming the second most widely grown crop by smallholder producers. Malawi had produced an agricultural surplus in the 1970s, but by the 1990s the country experienced a food deficit which grew into a “full blown food crisis in 2001/2002 and 2004/2005” [14].  In part, this was a consequence of the policy emphasis on rapid market deregulation and aggressive promotion of export-led growth strategies. The 2002 famine was also aggravated by the “mismanagement of strategic grain reserves” [15]  enabling grain speculation by connected elites. 
Mounting resistance to decades of one-party rule resulted in a referendum in 1991. This provided a popular mandate for Malawi to transition to a multiparty system in 1994 which was accompanied by growing calls for land reform. However, the new Constitution entrenched the property rights of those who had acquired estates.

The new government of Bakili Maluzi commissioned a Presidential Commission of Enquiry into Land Policy in 1996 which produced a final report in 1999. This led to the adoption of the Malawi National Land Policy in 2002. This was followed by the appointment of a Special Commission on Land Law in 2003 and a pilot land reform programme between 2003 – 2007. In 2010 Malawi developed a sector wide approach for agriculture in a bid to attain 6% agriculture growth by allocating at least 10% of budget resources to the agricultural sector. 
Although the Land Commission had drafted laws by 2006, these were only enacted 10 years later in 2016, under the fifth president of Malawi.

In 2013 land in Malawi was categorised as follows:

● 6.2-6.4 million ha classified as customary land; 

● 1.2 million ha of private land; 

● 1.1 million ha of leased agricultural estate land; 

● 1.8 million ha of public land;

● 300,000 ha of urban land [32]. 

With the passing of the Land Act (see above) these categories were condensed into public and private land with ‘unallocated’ customary land falling into the public land category.

The vast majority of customary land is held and managed through the descent groups, and land is inherited by sons in patrilineal groups, and daughters in matrilineal-matrilocal groups. Research has indicated that should the law impose equal inheritance of children in the name of gender neutrality, great disruption would occur in all areas and in those where daughters inherit, millions of women would be disinherited.

In Malawi today, research highlights “mounting evidence of increased inequality in access to land, intensifying competition and conflict over land with deepening rifts between and within kin, ethnic and regional groups, and expropriation of land by local and non-local agents” [33].  Inter and intra-family contestation over land rights [34] reflect wider processes of “social differentiation and class formation”[35]. 

In past land reform initiatives there is also evidence that tensions were created between local residents living in more remote villages and people moving away from more densely settled areas in search of land access. The World Bank funded Community Based Rural Land Development Project (CBRLDP) – a pilot initiative of the Malawi Land Reform Programme, involved relocating new settlers from other areas. In some instances, those arriving from the sending areas had different cultural practices and religious beliefs from those in the receiving areas. In some cases, Christians who raised pigs as part of their livelihood were resettled in predominantly Muslim areas where “raising pigs is considered taboo”. New settlers “were specifically warned not to raise pigs because if they do so their hosts will never share anything with them, particularly food”[36]. More common complaints however were that the soil and climate were often so different in the resettlement areas that new arrivals found it difficult to adapt their farming systems. As a result, some abandoned the land they had been allocated and went back home.

As the pressure on land increases, land governance and tenure arrangements have become increasingly contested. These can invoke old histories of dominance and subordination. One study in southern Malawi in the early 2000s reports that, in disputes over land, some claims were dismissed on the grounds of their being made by ‘newcomers’, while some were “described – in what is a great insult – as serfs (akapolo) since they are said to descend from people who were taken captive in small-scale wars, or given as pawns or sold into slavery by their own people. While most of the time the past histories of groups interfere little in daily life, the intensifying competition for land has drawn such histories into the forefront of dispute”[37]. 

Research highlights controversy over traditional authorities ‘selling’ land to outsiders, thereby privatising customary land [38].  But it is important to recognise significant differences among those labelled ‘chiefs’ or ‘traditional authorities’. The new Land Act seeks to vest greater authority in the highest levels of chiefly governance structure, while downgrading the powers of village level chiefs who are more likely to be accountable to local people.

Malawi has been the focus for extensive longitudinal research into the ways in which land rights of men and women are embedded within descent and marriage systems. Land tenure arrangements which reflect matrilineal descent and matrilocal marriage systems prevail in Central and Southern Malawi, while in the north of the country and parts of the Lower Shire patrilineal arrangements predominate.

Research suggests that matrilineal systems can create “considerable scope for women to obtain and secure land…(and provide)… proof of the viability of strong land rights for women [50]”.  This is despite colonial constructions of customary law which weakened women’s position within matrilineal groups [51]  and contemporary land tenure and land titling initiatives, which have promoted patrilineal norms and consolidated the power of elites.

There are many lessons to be learnt from the analysis of gender and land rights in Malawi. These caution against the homogenisation of ‘women’ and ‘men’, along with assumptions about their respective rights and entitlements. In practice, land rights vary not just by gender but by descent and kinship – daughters and sisters have very different positions from wives and widows. There is need for more fine-grained analysis factoring in local context, histories and accelerating social differentiation in order to determine the relative strength of rights and how they may vary across different settings.

Most Malawians rely on firewood or charcoal for energy. Forest cover of the country reduced from 47% in 1975 to 36% in 2005. The expansion of tobacco growing and the firing of brick kilns for construction has accelerated forest loss, which continues to diminish at the rate of 30,000 ha a year. This is the highest deforestation rate in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region [55]. 

Forestry in Malawi was a long-neglected sector before attempts were made in the late 1990’s to introduce participatory forest management approaches in policy and law. A World Bank supported forest policy review in 1992 led to the development of a National Forestry Action Programme in 1995. The Forest Act of 1997 creates a Forest Management Board and empowers the Minister to declare forest reserves and protected Forest Areas. In 2005 the Standards and Guidelines for Participatory Forestry in Malawi were published. These elaborate key steps and desired outcomes of the community-based forest management process [56].  However there is limited capacity to implement the Act and the prevalence of poverty locks rural households into expanded dependence on forest resources.

Dzalanyam Forest, photo by IFPRI, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license

The author's suggestion for further reading

LandNet Malawi is a member of the International Land Coalition and is reported to be a network of at least 40 civil society organisations advocating the pro-poor and equitable land and natural resource policies, legislation and decision-making processes. However, the organisation’s website was not functioning at the time of preparing this profile.

There is an extensive body of academic research on all aspects of land and natural resource management in Malawi. The references section below provides an indication of sources consulted in the preparation of this profile. The work of Pauline Peters and Blessings Chinsinga provided valuable analysis of land policies and practice in Malawi. A current research programme farms4biodiversity is modelling scenarios of land use change over the next 25 years, while reviewing community social dynamics impacting on land access and LandNet Malawi is a member of the International Land Coalition and is reported to be a network of at least 40 civil society organisations advocating the pro-poor and equitable land and natural resource policies, legislation and decision-making processes. However, the organisation’s website was not functioning at the time of preparing this profile.