Powered by IFAD

Rural poverty in Malawi

Malawi  is one of the world’s poorest countries, ranking 160th out of 182 countries on the Human Development Index.  Progress towards reaching the Millennium Development Goal of eradicating extreme poverty has been limited. According to the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report for 2009, about 74 per cent of the population still lives below the income poverty line of US$1.25 a day and 90 per cent below the US$2 a day threshold. The proportion of poor and ultra-poor is highest in rural areas of the southern and northern parts of the country.

Access to assets, services and economic opportunities is profoundly unequal across the population. Larger households are more likely to be poor, particularly those with many children. Access to education,  a major driver of relative wealth, is highly inequitable as well. Almost 30 per cent of poor children do not even start primary school, which is free in Malawi. Secondary and higher education is largely confined to non-poor households, mainly due to the required enrolment fees.  Limited access to markets and services is another constraint. Poor rural people tend to live in remote areas with few roads and means of transport, which limits their economic opportunities. Access to financial services is severely restricted, especially for smallholder farmers. Only 12 per cent of households have access to credit.
 
Poor rural people in Malawi are unable to diversify out of agriculture and tend to remain underemployed for part of the year. More than a third of rural households earn their livelihood only from farming or fishing. An additional 25 per cent combine work on their farm with other jobs, largely in agriculture. Other income sources tend to be limited to poorly paid agricultural labour. Few economic opportunities combined with the marked seasonality of rainfed agriculture leads to labour shortages during the critical phases of the cropping season, with underemployment for the rest of the year.

The recurrence of shocks frustrates attempts to escape rural poverty. The most common shocks are weather-related, such as crop failures and increases in the price of food. Illness or injury is also very common, as are shocks associated with death of family members, heightened by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which has affected 11.9 per cent of the population. Shocks often force households to sell assets, thereby undermining their ability to engage in productive activities. As a result, poor households have to adopt costly coping strategies such as selling assets, withdrawing children from school and reducing food consumption.

Agriculture is the most important sector of the economy, employing about 80 per cent of the workforce. The sector is dualistic, comprising smallholders and estates. More than 90 per cent of the rural population (2.5-3 million households) are smallholder farmers with customary land tenure. They cultivate small and fragmented landholdings over approximately 2.4 million hectares, with low yields, and are mainly subsistence-oriented. Average landholding size has fallen from 1.5 hectares in 1968 to around 0.8 hectares today. Over 80 per cent of this land is planted with maize. The estate land is mainly under freehold or leasehold tenure and the main crops are tobacco, tea, sugar and coffee. Tobacco is Malawi’s largest export cash crop, accounting for over 50 per cent of export earnings, followed by tea and sugar. Malawi is able to produce around 3 million tonnes of maize, which is above the self-sufficiency level of 2.3 million tonnes. However, in poor seasons widespread food shortages are experienced. Many households with large families and small plots suffer chronic food insecurity and malnutrition.

Despite the availability of better technologies, the productivity of most crops has not improved since the 1970s, largely as a result of declining soil fertility. Also contributing to the low yields are poor access to financial services and markets, unfavourable weather, small landholdings and nutrient-depleted soils, coupled with limited use of fertilizers. The use of improved varieties, together with fertilizers, better crop husbandry and irrigation, has the potential to greatly improve yields. Post-harvest losses are estimated to be around 40 per cent of production.

Livestock ownership is very low by regional standards. Performance of the livestock sector is affected by low productivity of the cropping sector: as cropping extends into grazing areas, the number of ruminant livestock has been decreasing. Per capita meat consumption and animal protein intake are low, contributing to poor nutrition among children.
 

Source: IFAD