The green belt initiative, politics and sugar production in Malawi

Abstract

This paper critically examines underlying political economy dynamics of the expansion of sugar cultivation in Malawi within the framework of the Green Belt Initiative (GBI). This is being promoted in the context of a protracted legislative impasse in land reform efforts, targeting primarily land that belongs to smallholder farmers. The paper argues that the promises of employment, technology transfer and infrastructure development, as outlined in the GBI concept paper and touted in the outgrower sugar cane project, remain rhetorical. Communities in the investment sites are experiencing a destabilisation of social relations, precipitated by persistent violent confrontations with a coalition of elites. Corporate and elite interests have coalesced to press on with the GBI experiment, even though the welfare of smallholders is being undermined, and despite the growing resistance through both legal and extra-legal means. This political economy of sugar must be understood in relation to Malawi’s elite politics, a pattern that has persisted across successive regimes.