Every morning, well before sunrise, Stanley Sazuze leaves his village in the southern Malawi tea-growing district of Mulanje and cycles into Mozambique. By the time the sun crests the horizon, Sazuze is tending his crops six miles away on a four-acre piece of land that he rents.
Sazuze, like many villagers in Mulanje and the neighboring Thyolo district, doesn’t have access to sufficient land to grow crops to sustain his family. According to the Farmers Union of Malawi, around 84.6% of the land is in the hands of large-scale farmers, so he is forced to rent a plot where land is still plentiful.
"We are suffering because most of the land here is occupied by tea plantations. We can only manage to get land for construction of our houses, and in most cases, this land is very small," Sazuze, who grows corn and pigeon peas, told Devex.
About the authors
Sophie Edwards
Sophie Edwards is a Devex Contributing Reporter covering global education, water and sanitation, and innovative financing, along with other topics. She has previously worked for NGOs, and the World Bank, and spent a number of years as a journalist for a regional newspaper in the U.K. She has a master's degree from the Institute of Development Studies and a bachelor's from Cambridge University.
Madalitso Wills KatetaMadatso_Kateta
Madalitso Wills Kateta is a Malawi-based Devex contributing reporter. He specializes in gender, human rights, climate change, politics, and global development reporting. He has written for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, The New Humanitarian, African Arguments, Equal Times, and others.
