This book offers the reader a portrait - a representation no less - of the social life and culture of the peasant-smallholders of the Shire Highlands, situated in Southern Malawi. It explores the relationship between the people of the Shire Highlands and the natural landscape - in all its diversity and dynamic complexity. It is an ethnographic study focussing specifically on the peasant-smallholders of the Highlands, who constitute around 80 per cent of the current population and their complex, multi-faceted relationship to the land and its diverse biota.

Malawi Business Law Handbook - Strategic Information and Basic Laws

This comprehensive, compelling, accessible and timely volume should be compulsory reading to academics, policy makers, social activists, and the general public in Malawi and elsewhere on the continent. The accounts the authors present of the pervasive dysfunctions of Malawi's troubled experiment with multiparty democracy since the mid-1990s, and the endlessly deferred dreams of development, are often dispiriting. Yet, their bleak diagnoses are often accompanied by ameliorative prescriptions that are simultaneously bold and pragmatic. The book exudes a sense of hope that the struggles for a better future will continue. In itself the book represents a testament to the possibilities of the country's democratic dispensation, the need to unflinchingly confront the country's debilitating political and socioeconomic pathologies. Such a text would have been unthinkable during the dictatorship of the founding president, Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda.

This book is a pioneering and comprehensive study of the environmental history of Southern Malawi. With over fifty years of experience, anthropologist and social ecologist Brian Morris draws on a wide range of data – literary, ethnographic and archival – in this interdisciplinary volume. Specifically focussing on the complex and dialectical relationship between the people of Southern Malawi, both Africans and Europeans, and the Shire Highlands landscape, this study spans the nineteenth century until the end of the colonial period. It includes detailed accounts of the early history of the peoples of Northern Zambezia; the development of the plantation economy and history of the tea estates in the Thyolo and Mulanje districts; the Chilembwe rebellion of 1915; and the complex tensions between colonial interests in conserving natural resources and the concerns of the Africans of the Shire Highlands in maintaining their livelihoods. A landmark work, Morris’s study constitutes a major contribution to the environmental history of Southern Africa. It will appeal not only to scholars, but to students in anthropology, economics, history and the environmental sciences, as well as to anyone interested in learning more about the history of Malawi, and ecological issues relating to southern Africa. /div

Markets are increasingly seen as vehicles to solve problems in developing countries. For example, improvements in market performance make potentially important contributions to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Access of smallholders to well-functioning markets is increasingly expected to contribute to poverty alleviation and improvement of both food security and environmental sustainability. This book presents the views of leading experts on where we stand and where we are heading in the field of markets, marketing and developing countries. Twenty essays in this book describe the role of marketing in achieving development goals, the track record of past market policies, the current functioning of value chains, the roles that market institutions play to facilitate market access for smallholders, as well as the potential to add value to farm produce through certification schemes, new technologies or innovation systems. The book is published in honour of the retirement of Aad van Tilburg, one of the pioneers in the field of marketing in developing countries. Early on in his career Van Tilburg recognised that improvements in the functioning of markets and marketing can be key to economic development with special reference to the livelihood of small producers and other market actors in developing countries.

The bulk of the world’s tobacco is produced in low- and middle-income countries. In order to dissuade these countries from implementing policies aimed at curbing tobacco consumption (such as increased taxes, health warnings, advertising bans and smoke-free environments), the tobacco industry claims that tobacco farmers will be negatively affected and that no viable, sustainable alternatives exist. This book, based on original research from three continents, exposes the myths behind these claims.

Prior work has shown that there is a significant amount of turnover amongst the African poor as households exit and enter poverty. Some of this mobility can be attributed to regular movement back and forth in response to exogenous variability in climate, prices, health, etc. ('churning'). Other crossings of the poverty line reflect permanent shifts in long-term well-being associated with gains or losses of productive assets or permanent changes in asset productivity due, for example, to adoption of improved technologies or access to new, higher-value markets. Distinguishing true structural mobility from simple churning is important because it clarifies the factors that facilitate such important structural change. Conversely, it also helps identify the constraints that may leave other households caught in a trap of persistent, structural poverty. The papers in this book help to distinguish the types of poverty and to deepen understanding of the structural features and constraints that create poverty traps. Such an understanding allows communities, local governments and donors to take proactive, effective steps to combat persistent poverty in Africa. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Journal of Development Studies.

Arguing that corporations are mainly responsible for the expansion of the damaging industrial food system, this discussion focuses on these organizations and the ways they organize and control food production and distribution. Demonstrating how the corporate food system destroys those systems based on local markets, local cultures, and biodiversity, this account highlights howit puts the profits of the few before the needs of people and leads to massive food safety incidents, environmental destruction, labor exploitation, and the decimation of rural communities. Informative and direct, this book aims to inspire individuals to actively take the food system back from corporations and put it in the hands of people."

Lester Mkanda is a Malawian Irish Inspirational Entrepreneur. Born in a dusty ghetto of Malawi Lester lost both of his parents by the age of 13, with so many deaths in his family, his childhood was lled with tears, poverty, fear and loneliness a very unpleasant situation which forced him to grow up fast and become mature beyond his age. In search for greener pasture at a young age Lester migrated to South Africa hoping to get any kind of odd jobs to help him get by, but things got even worse there before they got any better. With absolutely nobody around to lend him a helping hand Lester became homeless in that foreign land sleeping on cardboard boxes outside shops from where he would wake up each morning not knowing where his next meal was going to come from. Despite all the hardships that Lester was going through, he maintained a positive attitude towards life, worked hard and remain optimistic that things would someday get better. at dream came to life when years later he landed at Dublin airport to start his new life in Europe with absolutely nothing but a backpack carrying few pairs of clothes, he had holes in his socks and big dreams in his heart. From there he went on to building a business empire for himself. Lester is married to a fellow immigrant lady of Hungarian origin and together they have 2 children and lives in their family home in Ireland. His current mission is to unashamedly use his life story and experiences to inspire and motivate those that are going through the challenges of life so they will begin to see themselves di erently and begin to look for ways to turn their very own lives around and start to rise UP FROM THE DUST.