Agricultural inputs, seeds and fertilisers
Resurrecting the vestiges of a developmental state in Malawi? Reflections and lessons from the 2005/2006 fertilizer subsidy program
Does the fertiliser subsidy programme in Malawi signal the return of the developmental state?
Authors:
B. Chinsinga
Publisher:
Future Agricultures Consortium, 2007
The 2005/2006 fertiliser subsidy programme is widely cited as the most significant policy achievement of the Malawian government since the advent of a democratic political dispensation over a decade ago. This is especially in view of the fact that the programme was implemented against the advice of a whole gamut of technical experts and development partners. This paper explores how the experiences leading to the adoption and successful implementation of the fertiliser subsidy programme can be exploited as the basis for churning out a viable framework for a developmental state in Malawi, a country which is broadly understood as the state that seriously attempts to deploy its administrative and political resources to the task of economic development.
The author argues that the huge paradox is that the experience with the democratic political dispensation on the development front has been generally disappointing. Instead of facilitating tremendous transformation from conditions of abject poverty to prosperity, the state has found itself presiding over a period of rampant economic decay and the progressive weakening of the state machinery to spearhead development, relative to the authoritarian one-party era.
The following areas are considered:
- the developmental state in perspective
- Malawi’s experience with the developmental state
- the context and origins of the 2005/2006 fertiliser subsidy programme
- reactions to the fertiliser subsidy programme
- donors’ narratives and perceptions of the fertiliser subsidy programme
- impact of the subsidy programme
The author concludes that there is no doubt that the experiences with the 2005/2006 fertiliser subsidy could be a precursor for resurrecting the vestiges of the developmental state in Malawi but it is perhaps too early to fully project it as such. The potential of these experiences could be overestimated especially given the unique nature of the politics of food security in the country, but these experiences nonetheless invoke some food for thought.
