‘Things are not working now’: poverty, food insecurity and perceptions of corruption in urban Malawi

ABSTRACT

Malawi is one of the world's least urbanised countries, but its cities are growing rapidly and poverty in urban Malawi is becoming a prominent political issue. Food insecurity is a widespread manifestation of urban poverty in Africa, especially in informal settlements. This article is based on in-depth interviews with food insecure residents of Lilongwe’s informal settlements who, when asked why they were food insecure, overwhelmingly pointed to the Cashgate corruption scandal as a cause. There have been many political corruption scandals in Malawi, but the Cashgate scandal, which was revealed in September 2013 and reverberated throughout the political culture, has been among the most prominent and consequential of these scandals. The article seeks to contribute to literature on the political dimensions of urban food security in Africa while also presenting a way of understanding corruption from the point of view of vulnerable people whose lives have been directly and indirectly affected.

KEYWORDS:

• Urbanization
• food security
• corruption
• governance
• Malawi

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank would like to thank the Director of the African Food Security Urban Network (AFSUN), Professor Jonathan Crush. We would also like to thank Dr Rhoda Howard-Hassmann for her constructive feedback on an earlier version of the article presented at the 2016 conference of the Canadian Association of African Studies. We would also like to thank the University of Livingstonia for support of the research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Liam Riley is a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada. His research interests include urban food security, gender and development, and childhoods in Southern Africa. He can be contacted at: [email protected]

Emmanuel Chilanga is a Doctoral Candidate in the School of Social Work at McGill University, Canada and a Lecturer at the University of Livingstonia, Malawi. His research interests include urban food security, domestic violence, and food utilisation in Malawi. He can be contacted at: [email protected]

Notes

1 Please note all respondents were given pseudonyms to protect their identity.

2 In the interviews, respondents used the word katangale to denote corruption. This is the translation found in the Chichewa/Chinyanja – English dictionary as well (Paas 2009). Lwanda (2006, 526) argues that there is ‘a critical linguistic distinction between katangale (selling food for cash) and ziphuphu (corruption)’ this is needed to understand the political economy of informality in Malawi. Lwanda’s argument is supported by Chilowa’s (1991, 15): ‘Katangale can range from petty thieving to a complex networking system which involves selling goods on the black market’.