Development Politics and Administration: Some Considerations on Planning for Development at the Centre and the Periphery in Malawi

Abstract

The key issue which pervades the Malawi countryside is rural development. Yet the development environment inherited at independence has been characterised by scarce financial and skilled manpower resources for deployment to the rural periphery by the central government. During the decade since independence in 1964 great strides have indeed been made in manpower and other resource development. But the mainstay of the economy continues to be agriculture. The only major resource is land, comprising some 94,396 square km, on which more than 90 per cent of the population of about 5 million subsist as self-employed farmers. Within these constraints, the developmental effort — that is, the generation of the very resources that are required to promote and sustain development — is more heavily dependent on the productivity of the rural farmer than on any other group or sector of the economy, in the attempt to raise the living standards of the bulk of the population.