Integrated rural development in Malawi and socio‐economic change: The Karonga project

Abstract

Where regional rural development initiatives in Malawi fail to achieve their larger objectives, this may be because they overlook the production decision‐making of the peasantry. Given high‐level irrigation production conditions, peasant households will hire labour needed to maximise production only to the extent that it increases income. Unsatisfactory producer income and the absence of alternative markets lead to intolerable drudgery levels and so even to withdrawal from production, with adverse consequences for rural welfare and broader economic development

Notes

Senior Lecturer in Public Administration. Chancellor College. University of Malawi, Zomba.