MALAWI: Land redistribution scheme draws criticism

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

JOHANNESBURG, 14 Apr 2005 (IRIN) - Rights groups in Malawi have labelled a government land redistribution project as "cosmetic", saying the move was unlikely to improve the lives of the rural poor.

Commissioner of Lands Francis Majankono on Wednesday announced plans to purchase land from tea and tobacco estate owners under the government's willing-buyer, willing-seller policy. The redistribution exercise, funded by the World Bank to the tune of US $28 million, is expected to parcel out land to around 20,000 families in the country's southern region.

Malawi inherited a skewed distribution of freehold land after independence, in which the best agricultural land, particularly in the south of the country, was foreign-owned by tea companies.

In recent years land-hungry communities have stepped up calls for an accelerated redistribution programme that would place more land in the hands of the rural poor.

Malawi's 11.5 million people are largely dependent on agriculture. Although an estimated two million small-scale farming families hold between 1.8 and 2 million hectares of land, 72 percent of them actually cultivate less than one hectare per family. On average, individual households have less than 0.5 hectares of land - not enough to feed a family.

"This redistribution project is largely cosmetic, especially if you consider that there are hundreds of thousands of Malawians who are in desperate need of land for their daily sustenance. Yes, we must applaud the government for this exercise, but it is necessary to urge the authorities to make more land available to more people in the near future," Collins Magalasi, national co-ordinator of the Malawi Economic Justice Network, told IRIN.

The government has said it was committed to expanding the programme to other parts of the country at a later stage, but has not said how much land would be redistributed in total.

"It is not surprising that the government chose to redistribute land in the southern region because already the population in this area has started to encroach on the tea and tobacco estates," Magalasi pointed out.

He added that the government's willing-buyer, willing-seller policy was untenable, given the country's limited financial resources.

"If the government is serious about addressing land inequalities it will have to reconsider its land policy. Perhaps countries like South Africa can afford to embark on this expensive exercise of purchasing land at market value, but for a poor country like Malawi it is impossible," Magalasi noted.

Boniface Dulani, a lecturer in political studies at Chancellor College, agreed that the current land reform programme needed to be examined, adding that "the parcelling out of land will not alleviate chronic poverty" in Malawi.

"Land redistribution is long overdue, especially in the south, where there are vast tracts of land lying fallow. However, redistribution must, of course, take place in an organised fashion, whereby small-scale farmers are given support to work the land. It really is pointless if these 20,000 families have no support from the government," he commented.

Dulani said the recent poor harvest in Malawi showed that farmers were either ill-equipped to farm the land, or unable to afford expensive agricultural inputs.

"I suspect that some of the big tobacco farmers are, at this moment, quite keen to sell their estates after the poor showing in the last couple of seasons. Families who do move onto this land must safeguard that they are not inheriting land which has been over-farmed," Dulani warned.

According to the latest crop assessment, released by the Ministry of Agriculture on 1 April, prolonged drought conditions have reduced maize production by 24.6 percent this season. Tobacco was also down by 12.5 percent. The crop earns Malawi, one of the poorest nations in the world, more than two-thirds of its annual foreign revenue.

[ENDS]