Tobacco, Transformation and Development Dilemmas from Central Africa

Martin Prowse is Lecturer at the University of Manchester, UK. He has worked at the Overseas Development Institute, UK, and at universities in Belgium, Denmark and Sweden. His research focuses on equity in agricultural intensification, value chains and climate change, mostly in Africa. Paul Grassin is a Researcher at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, with expertise in social stratification, cultural anthropology and comparative politics. His research focuses on the production of social order, the sociology of the police and police-people relations in urban and rural Malawi.

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)