Malawi Country Profile
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Malawi Country Profile, Tobacco Tactics, updated 08 March 2024, accessed 16 April 2024.
Background
Malawi is one of Africa’s largest exporters of tobacco leaf. In July 2020, the population of Malawi was estimated to be approximately 21.2 million.1 The World Bank classifies Malawi as a low-income country.2
Tobacco Use in Malawi
The STEPS Survey, 2017 reported a current tobacco use prevalence of 22% male (18-69 years) and 3% female (18-69 years). The Global Youth Tobacco Survey, 2009 (ages 13-15) found that 16.7% of boys and 11.4% of girls were current tobacco users.3
Tobacco in Malawi
Malawi is one of Africa’s largest tobacco leaf producers and in 2015, produced 22.6% of all of Africa’s output of tobacco leaf.4 In 2018, 95,356 tonnes of tobacco were harvested in Malawi.5 It is one of the world’s largest producers of burley tobacco. In 2015, tobacco farming took up more than 5% of all of Malawi’s farming land – the highest percentage anywhere in the world, at that time. In the same year, it also had the fourth highest deforestation rate in the world; according to the government, tobacco is a major driver of forest loss in the country.6
Government ministers have called tobacco a “strategic crop” for Malawi and defended the country’s continuing investment in its production.7 However, earnings from tobacco leaf export have declined sharply over recent years.8
Three of the big four transnational tobacco companies, Philip Morris International (PMI), Imperial Brands and British American Tobacco (BAT) all purchase tobacco leaf from the two main leaf distributors in the country: Universal Leaf (in Malawi, known as Limbe Leaf) and Alliance One.9 Japan Tobacco International (JTI) buys its own leaf from the country. The Chinese National Tobacco Corporation (CNTC), the largest tobacco company in the world, also buys small amounts of tobacco from leaf purchasing companies Limbe Leaf and Alliance One.10
The cigarette market in Malawi in 2018 was estimated to be worth US$101.9 million and 2,408.9 million sticks by Euromonitor International.11
- For more information, please see the pages Tobacco Farming and Tobacco and the Environment.
Roadmap to Tobacco Control
Malawi ratified the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) in August 2023.12 However, as of 2021, it lacked a tobacco control programme and had implemented almost no tobacco control measures.3
In 2018, the Malawian Parliament passed the Tobacco Industry Bill to update the Tobacco Act (1970)13 and prevent the exploitation of farmers by tobacco companies.14 This is not, however, a tobacco control act: as researchers from the Centre for Agricultural Research & Development in Lilongwe commented in Tobacco Atlas, “although the Act was touted as protecting the growers, many farmers argue that the Act actually harms the farmers more than was the case before the new Act”.15 Instead, the Act and its update regulate tobacco growing and wholesale buying, selling and export of tobacco leaf.16 JTI said it had worked alongside government on the Bill’s formulation in 2018 with “stakeholders in the tobacco industry” and expressed its support for the Bill, saying it hoped it would “not be delayed”.17
For more details, please see the following websites:
- Legislation by Country/Jurisdiction – Malawi, Tobacco Control Laws, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids
- Malawi, WHO FCTC Implementation Database, WHO FCTC Secretariat
- Country profile – Malawi, World Health Organization, WHO report on the global tobacco epidemic 2021
Tobacco Industry Interference in Malawi
Leaf sourcing companies, including Alliance One, regularly publicise their corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, including the construction of schools and donations to orphanages as a strategy to address child labour or to disaster relief funds, in press coverage.1819202122 In one article, Alliance One was commended for building a school “in Malawi’s President Chakwera’s home area”. The company reportedly had spent MK153 million (approximately US$201,750) on primary school construction projects in the country.19 Tobacco industry CSR, and its promotion, is called “an inherent contradiction” by the WHO FCTC, which recommends against banning all such activities by tobacco companies.23
The Eliminating Child Labour in Tobacco-Growing Foundation (ECLT), an organisation funded and governed by tobacco companies, is active in Malawi. The Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, a front group wholly funded by PMI, also operates in the country. It has several grantees in the country, including the Centre for Agricultural Transformation (CAT) and the Malawi Agricultural Policy Advancement and Transformation Agenda (MwAPATA) Institute.
- You can read more about how the tobacco industry uses CSR as part of its corporate strategy on our CSR Strategy, CSR: Child Labour and Greenwashing.
Arguments about the importance of tobacco growing to Malawi’s economy are used by Malawian politicians to justify continued interaction and cooperation with the tobacco industry. In his September 2020 State of the Nation address, President Chakwera said:24
“while tobacco remains Malawi’s primary export and a key form of income for many Malawians, the crop is unlikely to provide a sustainable source of income in the longer-term given a decline in global demand. By working with tobacco companies, we can help blend other crop types into the farmers’ mix over time. Diversification efforts such as this can contribute significantly to household food security while supporting the establishment of a more resilient agricultural system. This is especially important given the resources, expertise, and strong domestic and international networks which tobacco companies can offer.”
The government of Malawi has engaged with the tobacco industry on tobacco pricing25 and foreign investment.26
In 2024, an investigation by media outlet ZAM and the Malawian Platform for Investigative Journalism reported that Alliance One paid almost no corporate income tax in Malawi in 2020 and 2021.27 Alliance One is Malawi’s second largest tobacco leaf merchant, with a market share of around 40%. It exported US$319 million in raw tobacco between 2020 and 2022, yet it paid no corporate income tax at all in 2020, and just US$41,000 in 2021.27 Corporate income tax in Malawi is supposed to be 30% of a company’s profit.28 During the same period, Alliance One sent payments abroad of around US$1.4 million and US$2.8 million.27
Alliance One, which is a subsidiary of the US agricultural company Pyxus International, supplies both BAT and Imperial Brands.2729
- For more information on Alliance One, see the Tobacco Supply Chain Database.
Attempts to influence international organisations using Malawi’s government
Another way that the tobacco industry gains access to policymakers, and therefore legislation, is through positioning itself as a ‘partner’ in development. Prior to the passage of the WHO FCTC in 2003, the tobacco industry influenced the government of Malawi to promote the arguments that tobacco control would result in job losses and foreign earnings that temporarily succeeded in distracting from the health benefits of tobacco control policies but was ultimately unsuccessful in weakening the WHO FCTC. This is an example of how tobacco companies use developing countries’ economic dependence on tobacco to lobby against global tobacco control.30
Similarly, alongside the 2014 UN General Assembly (UNGA), which the industry is prevented from attending, the tobacco industry met with the Malawian President to urge him to represent its interests on a global stage. The then-Chairman and CEO of Universal Leaf Tobacco Company, George Freeman, met with the then-President Mutharika to “brief him on their operations in Malawi”. Freeman urged the President to “support the Integrated Production System (IPS)” and requested the government “lobby with the U.S. government” to request that tobacco be included in the renewed African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA) after 2015.31 IPS is an industry-developed structure that adds supervision by technicians to the normal contract farming arrangement.32 The President responded that “Government will do everything possible to ensure a cordial relationship with companies in the tobacco industry”.31
Extensive research published in 2021 by the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath, a partner in STOP, and in conjunction with BBC’s Panorama, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project uncovered multiple instances of British American Tobacco seeking to frustrate tobacco control measures in Africa.
- For more details visit The BAT Files.
Relevant Links
- Alliance One International website
- Limbe Leaf Tobacco Company (Universal) website
- JTI Malawi website
- BAT Malawi website
TobaccoTactics Resources
- Africa’s Tobacco Epidemic
- Centre for Agricultural Transformation
- Tobacco Farming
- British American Tobacco
- Japan Tobacco International
- A list of TobaccoTactics pages on Africa
