Agriculture, Value Chains and the Rural Non-Farm Economy in Malawi, South Africa and Zimbabwe

This chapter compares rural development in Malawi, South Africa and Zimbabwe, concentrating on agricultural value chains and their implications for the rural non-farm economy (RNFE). Based on detailed qualitative exploration, it is shown that value chains in Mchinji (Malawi) are predominantly local, with few impulses being generated for the RNFE. The commercialised farms that characterise Weenen (South Africa) are locally disembedded, thus not triggering local development. In Mazowe and Mazvingo (Zimbabwe), agriculture is linked to a thriving RNFE and to distant corporate players. This creates down- and upstream markets that are significantly more complex and diverse than in the Malawian and South African cases. Against this background, the author suggests that dense, locally embedded and externally connected networks that do not suffer from an overly unequal distribution of power are most conducive to rural development.