LAND REFORMS IN MALAWI SINCE 1994: A Political Economy Analysis

Land reforms have been lingering since 1994 despite land being a major source of livelihood in rural and a tool for economic growth and poverty reduction in Malawi. It is estimated that almost 55% of smallholder farmers cultivate lessthan a hectare of land (Chinsinga and Chirwa 2008:2. The dawn of democracy was a critical juncture as it gave renewed hopes of a fast tracked land reform process. However, efforts for land reform have also been impeded by lack of commitment to enact a new comprehensive land law to replace the Land Act of 1967, which is not responsive to current trends and challenges on land. The Community Based Land Development Programme (CBLDP) sponsored by the World Bank has been the only significant effort undertaken to address the issue of Land reform though it has encountered numerous unprecedented challenges. This paper seeks to critically analyze the issue of land reforms in Malawi since 1994 through the lenses of political economy. It argues that land reform is not only a technical issue, but also a political one that involves winners and losers. The process of  land  reform since 1994  has been captured by  the  interests  of  actors  involved, leading  to  crafting  of  tenure arrangements that potentially result in asymmetrical benefits. Therefore understanding the interface between politics and economics is vital in implementing a pro-poor land reform.

Political economy analysis focuses on the interaction between politics and economics. It examines the distribution of power between different groups and individuals, and the processes that create, sustain and transform these relationships over time and how these relations affect outcomes of  development interventions (DFID2009:4) In any reform, parties have different powers, and interests, and winners and losers.  Political economy seeks to asses whose interest’s shapes and impact, the outcomes, success and failures of a reform. It is against this background that a political economy analysis also undertakes a stakeholder analysis with the aim of mapping stakeholders and their relation and influence over the policy reform process. This helps to find factors; incentives and actors that will oppose and support a reform process and how these will affect the outcome. A development program succeeds when key players have an incentive to make it succeed. When a society’s  key  actors  are  threatened  by  a  development  program,  they  have  an  incentive  to  make  it fail (Melim-McLeod 2012:1). However, the mere presence of an incentive does not translate into actors acting upon it. Stakeholders in the society have constraints and these puts a limit on their actions. Institutions are systems of rules that regulate behavior of stakeholders by establishing norms, rewarding compliance, and punishing violations (Fritz V, 2009: xiii)

Land reform in Malawi is caught in competing objectives between the state and private sector on one hand and local communities on the other  (Zuka 2013:154).This is manifested in the mismatch of agriculture policies being pursued by the state. Despite the recognition by the Malawi growth and development strategy (MDGS) and the Malawi poverty reduction strategy paper (MPRSP) that smallholder agriculture is a key to accelerated poverty reduction little has been done to address the issue of land scarcity. Government policy in agriculture has focused on increasing efficiency in production through the creation of large commercial farms. This is being achieved by consolidating smallholder farm plots.For instance the Green Belt Initiative is to ensure that the commercial farmers have access to large tracts of land for agriculture at the highest possible economies of scales (Chasukwa and Chinsinga 2012:2)The potential tax to be extracted from these commercial farmers and the huge sums of money accrued from such land deals are the major incentives upon which government has been acting upon. The powerlessSmallholder farmers have been losers. They are being squeezed out and exposed to food insecurity and poverty. There is need for state policy on agriculture to make a tradeoff between these commercial farms and smallholder agriculture.  

State interests have also been reflected in the recent Land Billof 2013. A political economy analysis of this bill reveals it has no transformative powers as far as land relations and distribution is concerned. It fails to establish substantial property rights to smallholder farmers farming on customary land because it merely reclassifies land into private and public. This means the Act implicitly puts customary land in the jurisdiction of the state and the state being a powerful actor is at liberty to perpetrate further land grabs on the pretext of encouraging an efficient utilization of the scarce resource.This indicates that the interests of the state is one of the major influencing factors impeding a meaningful pro-poor land reform.Zuka notes that  the  major  goal  of  and  reform  in  Malawi  is  generally  to change  customary  land  administration  to  suit  market capitalistic  economic  models (Zuka 2013:161)

Land reforms have also failed to understand the institutional contexts in which they are operating.According to Chinsinga, “understanding  the  interface  between  formal  and  informal  institutions  in  the context  of  the  reforms  is  important  in  terms  of  anticipating  and  dealing  unexpected consequences” (Chinsinga 2008). Malawian societies are either patrilineal or matrilineal and this has an implications on land process and the power dynamics in these societies. The Land Bill which will have a significant impact on reform processes mentions of ensuring equality in landownership regardless of sex and age or marital status. Though this is good in addressing some inequalities, it depends on how the state will succeed in changing institutional settings. By implication when enacted into a law, the act will dispossess women of some of the land in matrilineal societies and it will mean land gains for women in patrilineal societies and vice versa. Land reform processes in this context means changing existing social structures and this is an extremely difficult exercise. It is important to note that though informal social institutions may lack legitimacy in the eyes of the elites, they are a fabric of local communities and cannot easily be changed. Informal institutions serve a regulating purpose and should not be seen as weak or irrelevant (Melim-McLeod 2012:1). This means institutions also pose a serious challenge in the implementation of land reforms.

Land reform process has been captured by the elites. The elites who accumulated large tracts of land during post-independence era have been one of the powerful stakeholder which the state has failed to contend with. Estimates shows  that  about   2.6 million hectares of cultivable arable land falling under freehold, lies idle in the rural area (Chirwa&Chinsinga2008:2Paradoxically,Chinsinga and Chasukwa (2012:4) notes that government land grabs have involved taking land from smallholder farmers which is under use. The state owners have not been willing to give up their idle land until they get a compensation. On contrary, the government seems not to be ready to pay hugecompesations due to resource constraints. Thus, unless government acts on elite’s interests and incentive, a meaningful landform is far from being achieved. In general, this would require a strategic plan that will also examine not only the technicalities of such a redistribution but also the politics, incentives and interests involved. These elites have also taken advantage of their power to influence the outcome of the Land bill of 2013. The bill fails to make structural changes to free the idle lands being held by these elites.

The Community based land distribution program (CBRLDP) is one of the major initiative undertaken to address the issue of land. However, this programme has echoed the necessity of a political economy analysis if we want substantive reforms. It has been argued that the implementation of the CBRLD has failed to transform land relations and institute tangible reforms because it has been caught in the interests of elites and chiefs who benefited in the 1967 Land act.(Chinsinga 2008).Particularly, Chiefs,a losing stakeholder in the reform processes have been impeding the reform process using a number of tactics. The sending chiefs have been misinforming their citizens on the true intentions of the Land reform and have sometimes sought rents as precondition for being included as a beneficiary. They have also perceived the reform process of Community Based Land Distribution Program (CBRLDP) as a threat to their ruling powers. This has also been reflected in the chief’s resistance to the enactment of the Land Act 2013 which will see chiefs losing some of the unanimous powers through the establishment of Village committees on land. This portrays that there is no homogeneity of interests between the chiefs and the citizens in the villages who are in need of land. Chiefs are not the right representatives of the local people as their engagement in the land reform processes is driven by personal interests. In general terms, the design, reform and implementation of pro-poor institutional arrangements such as the one espoused in the World Bank CBRLDP  should go beyond its technicalities by examining political factors (Chirwa and Chinsinga 2008:3). In view of the diversity of in interests among stakeholders, it imperative that reforms take a wide sector approach and a multi discipline analysis ranging from politics to economics.

A capitalistic agenda has also been pushed in the reform exercise. There has also been growing conflict of interest on what land reform should actually do. The local people in the villages would like to have a land reform that involves restitution. For instance in Zimbabwe restitution was used as it was believed to bring fast results.  On the other hand, stakeholders like the World Bank who sponsored the CBRLDP initiative have always advocated for a market based redistribution involving a willing seller and a willing buyer. However, one sees that this approach is far from bringing fast results considering the urgency of the matter. Additionally, this approach has a potential of concentrating land to those who have the power to purchase the land and foreign investors. The smallholder farmer also emerges as a loser in this approach. This explains why efforts of the CBLRDP have been curtailed in different ways by residents in the areas where the land is being distributed under the program.

The purpose of a political economy analysis is to identify risks, which are factors that may impede a reform process and working on means to manage those risks. The foregoing analysis demonstrates that reforms create losers and winners. The winners will facilitate the change processes while the losers will impede or influence change to meet their interests. Therefore, instead of focusing on technical and managerial matters alone, there is need to examine the nature of incentives that exist for major actors that can help them to put public interests over their private interests. Land reforms process t should do a systematic political economy analysis of stakeholders, their incentives and interests and devise means of restructuring the incentives and interests in the manner that the actors will be motivated to influence a positive change in policy. Power analysis should be an integral part of reforms designs.  Above all, institutions should also be devised to support the actions of the actors and changes in policy because without this institutions will put constraints on the actors thereby limiting there sphere of action and the general processes of reform.

REFERENCES

Fritz V (2009) Problem-Driven Governance and Political Economy Analysis: Good Practice FrameworkWorld Bank, Washington

Chinsinga B and Chasukwa M, Green Belt Initiative and Land Grabs in Malawi: Policy Brief, Future Agriculture

Zuka P.S. (2013) Butterfly land policy reform initiatives in Southern Africa: Any promise from Malawi’s new land act,in Research Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Management Vol. 2(6), pp. 154-163

Chinsinga B, Land Reforms in Malawi: Where are we?  The Nation, Malawi: 29 July 2009

Chirwa E and Chinsinga B, (2008) The Economics and politics of Land Reforms in Malawi: A Case Study of the Community Based Rural Land Distribution Programme (CBRLDP) IPPG Policy Paper No.20

Melim-McLeod C et-al (2012), Institutional and Context Analysis: Guidance Note, United Nations Development Programme

DfID (2009), Political Economy Analysis How to Note:  A DFID practice paper. DFID