Pathways to Prosperity in Rural Malawi

Andrew Dabalen, Alejandro de la Fuente, Aparajita Goyal, Wendy Karamba, Nga Thi Viet Nguyen, Tomomi Tanaka

• Publisher: World Bank
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781464809972
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

By most accounts, rural Malawi has lacked dynamism in the past decade. Growth has been mostly volatile, in large part due to unstable macroeconomic fundamentals evidenced by high inflation, fiscal deficits, and interest rates. When rapid economic growth has materialized, the gains have not always reached the poorest. Poverty remains high and the rural poor face significant challenges in consistently securing enough food. Several factors contribute to stubbornly high rural poverty. They include a low-productivity and non-diversified agriculture, macroeconomic and recurrent climatic shocks, limited non-farm opportunities and low returns to such activities, especially for the poor, and poor performance from some of the prominent safety net programs. The Report proposes complementary policy actions that offer a possible path for a more dynamic and prosperous rural economy. The key pillars of this comprise macroeconomic stability, increased productivity in agriculture, faster urbanization, better functioning safety nets, and more inclusive financial markets. Some recommendations call for a reorientation of existing programs such as the Malawi Farm Input Subsidy Program (FISP) and the Malawi Social Action Fund Public Works Program (MASAF-PWP). Others identify promising new areas of intervention, such as the introduction of digital IDs and biometric technologies to enhance the reach of mobile banking and deepen financial inclusion. Finally, and importantly, the report recommends the scaling up of investments on girls' secondary education to curb early child marriage and early child bearing among adolescents. This will empower women at home and work and bend the trajectory of fertility rates in rural areas in order to boost human development and reduce poverty.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• Abbreviations
• Executive Summary
• Chapter 1 Recent Trends in Growth, Poverty, and Shared Prosperity in Rural Malawi
• Chapter 2 Agriculture and Poverty
• Chapter 3 Nonfarm Self-Employment Activities and Poverty
• Chapter 4 Social Protection and Poverty
• Chapter 5 Toward a Dynamic Rural Economy
• Appendix A Official Development Assistance and Government Expenditures for Education and Health
• Appendix B Daily Caloric Consumption per Capita of the Rural Poor
• Appendix C Correlation between Price Inflation of Maize and Food Insecurity
• Appendix D Variability of Food Staple Prices in Malawi and Comparator Countries
• Appendix E Agricultural Productivity, Public Spending, and Poverty Reduction
• Appendix F Determinants of Agricultural Productivity in Malawi, 2010–13
• Appendix G Characteristics of the Rural Poor and Nonpoor
• Appendix H Review of Public Work Programs in Low-Income and Lower-Middle-Income Countries
• Appendix I Household Participation Rates in the Malawi Farm Input Subsidy Program, by Landholding and Poverty Status
• Appendix J Effects of a Cash (Instead of an In-Kind) Transfer on Poverty in Malawi, 2010
• Appendix K Cross-Country Decompositions on Sectoral Employment and Productivity
• Appendix L History of Malawi’s Farm Input Subsidy Program
• Boxes
• Figures
• Tables