Key challenges to advancing land tenure security through land governance in Malawi: Impact of land reform processes on implementation efforts

Abstract

Malawi embarked on a long and arduous journey of adopting comprehensive and transformative land reforms from the mid-1990s. These reforms seek to promote equitable land access, tenure security and efficient land use. Land reform, however, is replete with competing interests and competing objectives by its originators. Using the concept of land governance, this paper explores the extent to which the methodology of the land reform program in Malawi, including its conceptualisation, aids the implementation strategy in achieving the ideal of tenure security and equitable land access. It explores three questions namely: What methodology was used in land reform processes in Malawi and why? What is the impact of this methodology on the implementation strategy? What are the likely outcomes of the impact in achieving the ideals of equitable land access and tenure security, especially for women? The paper demonstrates that the inefficient management by the state of the interests and objectives of key players in land reform, such as the chieftaincy and international economic actors, at conception stage and with regard to a land reform methodology impacts negatively on subsequent implementation efforts. This is the case for Malawi as the key challenges in implementing the land reforms directly stem from the inefficient management of the policy design stage of the land reform program and the skewed legislative processes that followed.