This article applies a global value chain framework to tobacco in Malawi. It illuminates how cigarette manufacturers govern the chain and control first-tier suppliers: the leaf merchants. Due to credence and litigation concerns, manufacturers have become obsessed with leaf integrity. Contract...

This book takes the reader through the expansion, restructuring and possible salvation of Malawi's main industry, tobacco. Malawi has been dependent on tobacco exports for a century, but now, with demand for Malawian tobacco declining fast, the country needs to diversify rapidly. The authors...

Smallholders now grow most of Malawi's main export crop – burley tobacco. Based on nineteen months' fieldwork in the Central Region, this article offers a sociological interpretation of why some smallholder growers spend a proportion of burley income on conspicuous consumption in rural towns...