Numerous studies have been undertaken on the political economy of agricultural policies in
developing countries. These studies have explained agricultural policies in terms of urban bias, economic
reforms, and domestic politics. Recently, the emphasis has been on explanations that reference the
existence of a rational-legal and patronage element within the African state. Such explanations tend to
underplay the extent to which agricultural policies are devised in a context of power asymmetries between
the state and international donors or financial institutions. In the Malawian context specifically, limited
attention has been paid to the possibility that policies are a negotiated outcome of interactions informed
by competing objectives at the state-donor interface. Accordingly, the proposed study will attempt to fill
this existing gap in the literature.
Malawi is currently at the center of policy debates regarding the state’s capacity to launch a
uniquely African Green Revolution within a marketized and capitalist configuration. Such debates mark
the continued underinvestment in agriculture on the African continent. The Malawi case, therefore,
provides a unique opportunity to explore the extent to which state level efforts are either confounded or
enabled by donors and international financial institutions. The specific successes and failures of the
Malawi case speak to the question of how other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa might successfully
address food production and food security issues.
This dissertation will explore the overarching question of the role of the state and international
donors in shaping agricultural and food security policies using Malawi’s farm input subsidy program as a
case study. The main research methods to explore this question are qualitative, including interviews with
various development stakeholders (government ministries, international development agencies,
researchers from policy research and academic institutions, and civil society organizations) associated with agriculture and food policy making, and textual analysis of publications associated with them. The
research specifically targets key experts in the area of agriculture and food security.
The findings indicate that policies have been greatly influenced by the competing ideologies of
the state and donors, with each recognizing the problem but differing on the approach and modalities for
solving food insecurity in Malawi. To this extent, there has been considerable inconsistency in policies
with obvious negative outcomes. More recently, there has been an aligning of policy positions towards
the use of social welfare programs and commercialization in addressing food insecurity. This alignment
relates to policy positions on both the FISP and the configuration of the wider agricultural sector as a
whole, as manifest in the National Agricultural Policy, for example. The role of domestic politics vs.
donors in policy processes has been in flux due to changes in the political and economic environment and
configuration at specific junctures.
The study also finds that evidence has been important in informing policy making, more
importantly, finance has had significant impact in attenuating the influence of domestic politics, so that
the recently proposed and implemented reforms to FISP, although connected to considerable
sociopolitical pressure from various quarters, have been largely precipitated by a serious fiscal crisis on
the part of the government. To this extent, the state has assumed a pragmatic approach to policy making
i.e., one that is cognizant of the limitations imposed by both finance and Malawi’s very harsh,
challenging, and complex context.