The Centre for Agricultural Research and Development (CARD) of the Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR) is implementing a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded project entitled, Building Research and Capacity on the Economic Policy – Tobacco Control Nexus in Africa. The multi-country project is being implemented in Kenya, Malawi and Zambia and involves partnerships among CARD, the University of Zambia, the International Institute for Legislative Affairs (ILA-Kenya), the University of Ottawa (Canada), McGill University (Canada), and the American Cancer Society (USA). The primary objective of this project is to understand the political and economic factors that contribute to tobacco production and control. Tobacco is a unique crop. On the one hand decades of research has confirmed that tobacco consumption is entirely detrimental to human health, while on the other tobacco continues to be a lucrative economic commodity for some. From a policy perspective there is a global movement by governments to control the marketing, sale, price, packaging and other aspects of tobacco products while within the same governments there is often ambivalence to or outright dismissal of the health risk of tobacco consumption as officials privilege policies that support tobacco production. The policies that support tobacco production are often founded on the belief that tobacco is an important crop for economic development. Malawi is a country that has relied and continues to rely heavily on tobacco production. Malawi’s economic ties to tobacco production fall in two broad categories. The first pertains to the relationship between tobacco production and country-level economic factors such as foreign exchange earnings and direct and indirect economic effects of tobacco industry investment. The second category involves the relationship between tobacco production and the economic livelihoods of tobacco growers. It is this second category that is the focus of this report. There is a common narrative promoted by tobacco interests that tobacco control will result in economic hardship for farmers who rely on this crop. Governments of many tobacco-producing countries also continue to claim that tobacco control hurts farmers’ livelihoods. Despite the widely purported claim that tobacco farmers benefit economically from tobacco growing and are detrimentally affected by tobacco control at the national and international level, the empirical research to support this assertion is scarce. Empirical evidence systematically elucidating the nature of tobacco farmers’ individual-level livelihoods in Africa is scarce.