Tobacco, Transformation and Development Dilemmas from Central Africa [Hardcover]

This book takes the reader through the expansion, restructuring and possible salvation of Malawis main industry, tobacco. Malawi has been dependent on tobacco exports for a century, but now, with demand for Malawian tobacco declining fast, the country needs to diversify rapidly. The authors combine an innovative range of theory and methods to provide a comprehensive and incisive analysis of the dilemmas faced by countries which still rely on a limited number of agricultural commodities in the 21st century. This work will be ideal for scholars and researchers interested in political economy and African development. 1. Introduction.- 2. Smallholder Burley Reform Process and Maize Production in Malawi 1990  2005.- 3. A Comparative Value Chain Analysis of Smallholder Production - 2003/4 and 2009/10.- 4. Traceability and the Global Tobacco Value Chain.- 5. Brokers and Bondage at the Coalface of Contract Farming.- 6. Competition and the Institutional Architecture for Contract Farming.- 7. A Very Short Political Economy of Malawi.- 8. Conclusion.

The monograph is an informative, if short (139 pages), study of Malawi's main income earner, the tobacco sector, with a specific focus on smallholder burley tobacco production. & The authors use quantitative and qualitative methods with value chain and political economic analyses to raise questions and suggest answers for the tobacco sector, particularly smallholder burley tobacco production, and for broader economic development. (Pauline E. Peters, Journal of Agrarian Change, May, 2020)