This paper explores climate change – agriculture
debates in Malawi in view of the increasing interest and
funding pledges for the agricultural sector in a changing
climate. While there is increasing evidence of how climate
change may affect Malawian agricultural systems, and
a growing body of literature on possible response
strategies, less is known about how priorities are made,
by whom and with what outcomes. This matters because
climate-related funding can be a major factor for how
the agricultural sector develops, in Malawi as in other
countries across Africa.
This paper is the first of its kind to analyse policy
discussions on climate change and agriculture in the
country. The primary focus is the national level, but some
of the implications of national debates at sub-national
levels, and the questions they raise, are also discussed.
The paper shows how the climate change-agriculture
debate at national levels is largely framed as an issue of
managing the additional risks on agricultural production
systems. The two dominant narratives in Malawi centre
on, first, the need to make agriculture robust in the face
of climate change, and second, to consider agriculture
as part of a broader development focus. Implications of
these narratives are discussed in the case of four
strategies, namely conservation agriculture, droughtresistant
varieties, agroforestry, and index-based weather
insurance.
The paper argues that key factors to understand policy
processes and their outcomes in Malawi include the
struggle for leadership and coordination among key
government actors, the government’s attachment to the
subsidy programme, and donors’ strong influence on
the policy agenda as well as actual strategies. The paper
shows that current debates create a situation with
incoherent policy responses, reducing the likelihood of
achieving policy goals for either agricultural development
or climate change. Important challenges thus remain in
integration of policy goals across the two areas that work
in synergy rather than undermine each other.