"70% of Malawians live on less than $2.15 a day. Under the World Bank’s revised $3-a-day poverty line, it’s 75%."
This sounds like an extremely bimodal distribution -- a 40% increase in the cut-off line only captures 5% more of the population, so only a small number of people are in this "poor but survivable" zone, with most well under and some well over, I assume. Does this map to the usual rural/urban divide?
Regarding Rwanda, I think we're forgetting that a large part of their success comes from their plundering of the Congo's resources, mineral and otherwise.
There have been two gigantic continent-wide wars over the Congo, for fuck's sake.
Perhaps there are cultural reasons that explain this, such as attitudes towards work, entrepreneurship, private ownership etc?
I have no idea if Rwanda and Malawi have difference there, but globally one can see clearly see the impact of culture. Just look at how well Japan did despite losing WW2 and having little natural resources, or how badly Russia has done despite its huge landmass and resources, because the political culture always seems to lead to really bad autocratic governance.
In my country (Finland) areas where Swedish speaking people are the majority do consistently better than neighbouring areas with Finnish speaking majority - lower unemployment, less health and social issues and so on. Some of that may be due to historical accumulation of wealth, but I'm convinced that mostly it's because of differences in cultural values and attitudes. Some studies indicate that the Swedish speakers tend to have better social life, which improves life outcomes in many ways.
I mean, is it beyond belief that many of them are OK with living a simple agrarian life? Or have very little opportunity to learn that there is any other way to live?
In this community it is well beyond belief. It’s up there with UFOs and lizard people. Not extracting every. Last. Penny. From EVERYTHING no matter the impact. Anathema to a hardcore capitalist forum like this.
Makes you wonder if less public debt and less focus on growing cash crops to service that debt might actually make for a more comfortable 'simple agrarian life' overall. Even if this meant lower GDP.
I've often thought there's something wrong with the way we put a simple dollar figure on poverty. Less than $3 dollars a day with or without easy access to land, shelter, and fresh water?
More like: Rwanda has a competent dictator (and has had the same one for 26 years, more if you consider the years where he was the strongman behind the President). A competent dictator is better than an incompetent dictator -- or even, in many ways, an incompetent democracy.
Is Malawi an incompetent democracy? Based on the article it seems to have a functioning stable democracy.
Are you implying that a dictator would lead to Malawi becoming wealthy? Seems like a disturbing argument. If that’s not what you are implying then what are you implying?
Are you implying that a "functioning" democracy automatically leads to good decisions being made and crowd always has good wisdom regardless of the attributes of the crowd?
To lead a country to prosperity is as simple as letting a nation vote and counting their votes and then giving power to the guy they voted for?
I'll mention it here because it's tangentially related to your comment. The book "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families" about the Rwandan genocide and aftermath helped me understand the country and it's current state much better. The book has the added benefit of being from 1999 so has far fewer of the culture war components one would expect from a similar book released today.
Immigrants to any country are a unique slice of the population because they chose to migrate for a better life. Hence immigrants in most countries tend to do well economically (sometimes after a generation). Uncertain that cultural differences are the reason for different economic outcomes you observe.
Swedish speakers in Finland are not immigrants anymore than Dutch speakers in Belgium are, though (the Dutch speaking area also generally does better than the French speaking areas, for a variety of reasons).
it is interesting to note that since the industrial revolution it was the french speaking part of belgium that flourished due to its steel industry, and the dutch speaking part was the poor one. only when the steel industry stopped being competitive the economy switched away from industry to service where the french part stagnated and the dutch part started to flourish,
so clearly who does better has nothing to do with the language but with the economy and who has the better resources and is more adaptable to serve the current needs.
There was significant repression on the Dutch language in Belgium not long ago. There was no Dutch university prior to 1930s and courts were solely in french for a long time.To this date there's still some Bruxellois who'll call you Sale Flamand (dirty Fleming) if you speak Dutch in the capital city. It is however way better now than 50+ years ago, my grandfather got beat up for speaking Dutch.
Saying language had no influence on who did better is inaccurate.
but it's not the language that's the cause here. it's politics. it's who is in power to decide and direct investments. the language's only function here is to divide the people. so yeah, it had an influence in that sense.
but what i meant to say is that language does not have an influence in an absolute sense in that say dutch speakers would always do better than french speakers or something like that because of the language somehow giving them an advantage. the advantage comes from being part of the group that is in power.
This viewpoint never made sense to me, because you have variation within any culture, and because advantageous strategies win out over time, any culture will evolve. Therefore, it never made sense to me to consider culture a static immutable group of homogeneous people. To me it is pretty obvious that some systematic challenges must exist that keep what we consider to be successful strategies from succeeding in those environments.
Your examples of Russia and Japan are easily explained by geopolitics. Indeed, Japanese individuals don't tend to excel out of Japan while many Russians do.
And people define victory in different ways. Having many children is how some people define victory. Having no children and a diploma on the wall is how some people define victory.
> 'The unit of analysis for "why is X poor" may be the political coalition, not the country.'
So maybe the real question here is not about the absolute poverty, but the derivative: "Why hasn't Malawi seen meaningful growth for 30 years?" — And the answer could be surprisingly related to first-world countries like Finland that also have experienced decades of stunted growth.
Like Malawi, Finland has functional and stable multiparty politics. Like Malawi, Finland's politicians have spent decades locally optimizing for minor benefits towards their preferred flavor of the median voter (right wing cuts taxes a bit, left wing improves benefits a bit, nobody offers anything transformative).
Too much stability at the wrong time might be a slow curse.
Foreign aid is rarely a gift - in almost all cases it is a business transaction. It is given as a loan, or in return for some mineral rights, or for an important UN vote, or for allegiance in a war.
For the loan cases, the terms are often unaffordable, effectively handing effective control of the entire country to the entity who has the other end of the loan - it is the modern empire-by-debt.
A lot of foreign aid is direct things like food, medicine, doctors, AIDS prevention programmes, vaccines for specific things, maternal care, containment of an Ebola epidemic, etc.
Do you really think that e.g. Kenya is voting alongside EU members because the EU paid for a part of a highway between two cities in Kenya?
Then yes, there are loans and grants for infrastructure things.
> For the loan cases, the terms are often unaffordable, effectively handing effective control of the entire country to the entity who has the other end of the loan - it is the modern empire-by-debt.
That's not true. The rates are very public, and while sometimes they are on the higher end, unaffordable is a stretch, and that's how loan rates work. It is inherently risky to give loans to a developing country with high corruption rates. That's why there are also lots of direct grants or direct physical aid with stuff instead of money.
The IMF also sometimes gives loans with strict requirements on market reforms, which can be controversial. Notably in the former Soviet/Warsaw pact bloc, economic shock therapy under instruction of the IMF had some devastating short term consequences, and in some countries led to mass dubious privtisations. In most though, it paid off and led to rapid and sustained economic and social growth.
The Rwanda case cannot be told without Paul Kagame, one of the rare authoritarians who is also a real nation-builder, analogous to Park Chung Hee (South Korea, 1960s-1970s). He locks up his opponents but also has leveraged aid to really help socioeconomic conditions. E.g., the very close and productive collaboration with Partners in Health/Paul Farmer.
Kagame cannot be compared to Park Chung Hee or LKY. Park's economic policies actually helped South Korea climb up the economic value chain, though a lot of that was also due to Japanese technology transfers to Korea in the 1960s-90s.
On the other hand, Kagame's execution on economic reform has been a failure when compared against Uganda, as Uganda [0] has a significantly more complex (ie. higher value) economy than Rwanda [1] despite also suffering a severe civil war in the 1990s and dealing with the Idi Amin's kleptocratic rule in the 1980s.
For both, around half of GDP is in the services sector. It doesn't matter that much what raw resources they export when it's a smaller portion of GDP (23% in Rwanda, 15% in Malawi). Also, almost all of those raw resources that Rwanda exports are stolen from the DRC by Rwanda-backed militias.
Foreign aid, and Rwanda's ability to position itself geopolitically as a trusted stable partner (which enables more aid and for it to get away with theft and murder) have more impact than maize vs gold.
And in the end, there are plenty of countries that have successfully developed and become less or not poor without having anything of serious value to export. From Bangladesh to the Balkans (I mean post-decolonisation Balkans, not post-Iron Curtain - it was mostly an area with subsistence farming as the main employment, disease, low rates of literacy and very low for higher education, frequent conflict and ethnic/religious tensions, few natural resources other than grain and some very limited amounts coal/minerals). If anything, it usually is the opposite, cf. the resource curse.
As the article states, that Malawi hasn't developed much industry or exports is more of a description of poverty than an explanation. Malawi can grow coffee, but mostly doesn't. They have rare earth element deposits, but little mining. Why haven't they developed more?
Could it be that they haven't been so infected by the money bug that for now they still have a society oriented around happiness and maintaining traditional ways of life rather than economic attainment?
I live in South Africa and my gardener happens to be Malawian, as was a gardener my parents had when I was growing up.
They’re both good people with pride in their work, but they are from poverty and have little in the way of skills except for manual labour jobs.
They came to South Africa, like so many from nearby countries, as our significantly more developed economy offers far better earning opportunity.
Not relevant to your comment, but want to also mention this creates xenophobic tension with the section of the local population which is in poverty as they feel their jobs are stolen. While there are certainly cases where people illegally employ immigrants to pay them less than locals, in cases where pay is at least equal, Zimbabweans and Malawians tend to have reputation of being more honest and hard working than the indigenous population.
We have Nigerians come here too and by contrast they tend to be super scetchy.
I don't know why Malawi is poor but I was struck by how easily this comment can be paraphrased to describe somewhere thousands of miles distant.
*********
I live in North Texas and my gardener happens to be Mexican, as was a gardener my parents had when I was growing up.
They’re both good people with pride in their work, but they are from poverty and have little in the way of skills except for manual labor jobs.
They came to North Texas, like so many from nearby countries, as our significantly more developed economy offers far better earning opportunity.
Not relevant to your comment, but want to also mention this creates xenophobic tension with the section of the local population which is in poverty as they feel their jobs are stolen. While there are certainly cases where people illegally employ immigrants to pay them less than locals, in cases where pay is at least equal, Hondurans and Mexicans tend to have reputation of being more honest and hard working than the indigenous population.
We have Floridians come here too and by contrast they tend to be super sketchy.
********
I read your original comment and was struck by how well it fits the situation here in Texas. You could've made the same comment about South Africa 40 years ago and it would still translate to the situation in Texas.
I don't know how you feel about people coming to South Africa for a shot at a better life but have to say that I have the highest respect for those men and women who have left their homes and families across the border for an uncertain future here in the US despite knowing that it is quite true that in many jobs they will be paid less than locals who do less actual work. All of this while being gamed by employers who know that they are illegally in the country and who work closely with Immigration Officials to identify people who can be quickly rounded up and sent south to pad some politician's resume or to distract the public from some other more significant issue. The employers never suffer consequences though they are the ones who created the opportunity and actively assisted in concealing immigration status for many of the workers.
It is a complex issue that should be solvable but as long as there are powerless people to heap the blame on we will probably see this continue.
Yes, I was thinking as I wrote it that there are likely parallels to places in US.
And yes, it’s a complex issue for sure.
I’m convinced that the way out of poverty here is through education and sadly there is just a huge amount of apathy (when not corruption)
at all levels here by the people who are supposed to be making it happen, from pupils, their parents, teachers, etc, all the way to the minister of education.
Meanwhile people like me pay huge amounts of tax and still need to pay for private schooling for my kids, private security and medical aid.
Essentially, most of the money I pay for tax is a charity intended for the poor, but due to apathy/incompetence/corruption, not nearly enough of it gets used effectively.
When you consider places that do have significant mining, it isn't like that investment is exclusively home grown. Often what happens is it comes from external capital seeking permissive governments willing to give claims to these natural resources to these external companies to make a profit off of.
The fact that there is little mining of the natural resources in Malawi paints a picture of a government that might be less influenced by foreign money than others in the global south, moreso than any statement on poverty.
Malawi is poor because there is no reason for it to grow above the normal growth rate. Countries usually find themselves in a high growth situation if they are at the cross-road of major trade or geopolitics (ie: Singapore, UAE, korea, Taiwan, etc.) Of course the opportunity has to be cultivated but it has to be there in the first place.
There isn't much in Africa especially in the part of Malawi. They are not even coastal (they are landlocked) which makes their situation even worse.
The Central African Republic, which has a low population density, lots of water and arable land is also very poor. As is South Sudan. It must be very hard to trade your way out of poverty if you are landlocked in a poor continent. All the countries in Europe are well off by world standards because there's an enormous market next-door.
The question isn't "why is Malawi poor compared to European countries", it's "why is Malawi poor compared to other countries in a similar – or worse – situation"
Look at the map in the article. It's a lot lighter in the middle than around the coastline. Niger, Chad, Burundi, South Sudan, CAR. These are all very poor. Malawi is not really an exception.
Merchant caravans are known from ancient times. If there was something valuable to sell, there likely would be a way to transport it to a nearest port (even if abroad) and still make a profit.
This is a dumb take that highlights the common lack of experience with Africa that arises with anyone who writes about it - Malawi was always much poorer than the rest of East Africa as can be seen by the 1990 HDI [0].
Starting from a lower base as well as weak institutions, weak capital markets, and political instability during the transition to democracy lead Malawi to underperform.
Additionally, Rwanda received massive amounts of foreign aid to a degree that Malawi and other African nations never saw [1]
Unsurprising that this is an OpenPhilanthropy blog.
Malawi needs to drop tobacco as their main export. Tobacco is hard on the soil and requires more fertilizer and acidifies the soil. Swapping out tobacco for something like a specialty coffee would be far better (and Rwanda has done that) Bringing some hard specie with Coffee would really help and the foreign aid could help them make the transition, which would take a few years to get going.
> Malawi needs to drop tobacco as their main export
That's the product they have most comparative advantage in producing. You're literally suggesting they should cut their income down, and try to get better at something else.
Tobacco is a crop that is experiencing declining demand. Neighboring Rwanda has built up their coffee export business, and Malawi could too. And as I mentioned it’s less harsh on the soil which is and added benefit.
Rwanda has prospered for the past three decades while Malawi has floundered because Rwanda is run by an effective dictator engaging in developmentalist nation-building. Malawi has no equivalent power center, and certainly none with the beneficence to try and raise up their countrymen.
> It ranks 107th out of 180 on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, which is middling, but not especially bad, roughly comparable to Indonesia and Brazil.
I would still guess corruption is a major reason. Sometimes the way it’s measured and how it’s reported is not accurate. People internalize corrupt practices as normal and stop viewing it as corruption. A bribe is a gift, a nepotistic appointment is “taking care of one’s family”.
It also doesn’t always make sense to compare only corruption with other countries. Some may be more corrupt but they have enough positive factors that they develop better despite the corruption.
It is notoriously difficult to gather accurate quantitative data on illegal or unethical activities. And the weightings in the index are rather arbitrary.
That’s also a possibility. I was mainly thinking where it’s so embedded it’s not even perceived as corruption anymore.
But yeah, what you’re saying is also done. Usually something like an anti-corruption ministry is created. Their job is to find and prosecute corruption. Guess what the most “lucrative “ and cushiest jobs are now - that’s right, the anti corruption ministry itself. Anyone doing business now has to bribe them too in addition to whoever they bribed before. And corruption goes “down” officially, and it looks good on international external metrics.
Countries trying to become uncorrupt generally go way down because they can start reporting on found corruption. This means people care and so it is worth reporting.
The Tranparency International's index is a horrible measure.
It's more dependent on the press reporting corruption than of any other factor, for the extent that it measures anything real it focuses exclusively on small scale corruption, and it incredibly biased by cultural factors.
It's a mistake to use it to compare one country with another, and it's a mistake to use it to spot trends in a single place. AFAIK, it's a mistake to use it.
Does anyone even give them credibility in the first place…?
Such an exceedingly complex thing just seems improbable to take at face value, without an enormous amount of proof and well reasoned methodology backing it up.
> “Malawi is poor because its agricultural productivity is low” is closer to a tautology than an answer.
I used to make the same error. Thing is in the natural sciences this looks like circular reasoning, but in the humanities quite commonly things just hang in thin air. Case in point, the banker looks at the poor farmer and denies credit because the guy doesn't have capital, and the farmer doesn't have capital because he can't get credit. Thing is, both sides understand that.
Even with this, a farm in Finland I'm guessing is probably far more productive with better equipment and increased investment in fertilizer, pesticide, and utilization of elite cultivars, which have increased western yields in many crops by several fold change over the past 70 or 80 years (corn shown in 1, yellow denotes "old agriculture", green denotes introduction of industrial fertilizer, blue denotes introduction of hybrid engineered cultivars).
But Finland obviously has other economic sectors to rely upon than mainly farming.
For those who don't "get it", it's output is not dismal, far from it LOL.
About 5M people, a fifth the population of Malawi, none the less are one of the top producers in the entire world for oats and barley. Not per capita... total. Wow. Note that only about 10% of the population farms which makes the ratio even crazier.
Finns as a whole somehow produce about 2x their entire countries body weight in barley per year which always freaks me out. The country is also one of the top 10, usually top 5, producers of oats in the entire world, and they're competing with giant countries like Canada and Russia. Giant Canada only produces about 3x as much oats as tiny Finland.
Finland climate isn't what you'd think of for tomatoes but they produce about three dozen tomatoes per capita every year, which is also weird to think about. Not just how do they grow that many tomatoes, but why? They like pasta sauce and pizza sauce that much?
However Finland is not massively wildly overpopulated with frequent famines like Malawi. Those conditions will annihilate a countries productivity, including ag productivity.
I'm left wondering what people in Malawi think about this. I have no idea whether they'd be better than this outside perspective at analysing the factors behind slow growth, but the comparison might be interesting regardless.
> Malawi has also long been a darling of donors. Malawi’s aid per capita in 2023 was roughly 2.5x the global average.
Maybe the population doesn't feel like it needs to be productive, if they're continuing to receive such generous largesses. Isn't that the goal of UBI for developed nations? People should be able to pursue their passions and not have to worry about the necessities of life?
> The fertilizer subsidy program (FISP) consumes up to three-fourths the agriculture budget in some years to subsidize maize inputs for smallholders. It is politically untouchable because rural maize farmers are the median voter. Several administrations have made some attempt to reform it and backed down. Resources that could go to roads, irrigation, or diversification go to propping up the existing structure.
Idk, this one doesn't seem super difficult to diagnose. The political system has been captured by a special interest with consolidated control.
Special interests, yes. Consolidation–as in a unified interest group representing a commanding majority of the economy–no. At least none that aren’t similarly stagnating.
It's very strange what they don't discuss, especially when it seems to answer supposedly unanswerable questions.
I rooted around in wikipedia and Malawi has FAR more people than the land can support. They have a top down demand they must grow maize although the land and climate are very unsuited for maize. Why? Unsurprisingly they have had severe recent famines unlike Rwanda. If they had capacity they could survive a minor shortfall in rain but they have more people than the land can support so the famines are very rough. They have about 3x the agricultural land as Rwanda but its not suited to maize but its demanded they grow maize. Maize will only grow with massive fertilizer imports which they cannot afford and occasionally politically/economically manage to totally screw up, alongside Maize is traditionally dependent on very reliable rainfall or post industrial era advanced irrigation which they don't have.
I would estimate the geography of Rwanda will support about 20M people, luckily they have about 14M. They can coast thru some rough agricultural times and they've developed enough industry and trade that they can import their way thru short term minor local problems.
On the other hand Malawi can only support maybe 15M people reliably, unfortunately they have about 22M. When the rains don't come or the politicians screw up the fertilizer imports, they die.
Its very difficult for them to "advance" beyond subsistence ag without enough to feed everyone and ag policies seemingly intended to be self destructive.
I don't know why they "have to" grow maize despite it resulting in starvation. Historically this type of thing is caused by someone making a huge profit or attempting to maintain control. Regardless of cause, until they can eat, they will not advance.
After eating dinner tonight they can dig a mine or build a factory. Oh wait there is no dinner tonight. Well then. And so they remain very poor, permanently.
The country, as a plot of land, is quite wealthy. $22B is a lot of money. If they had, say, 3M people as a population they'd be in position to become the next Taiwan. Taiwan's GDP per capita was about there in the mid 80s before they really took off. But they have over 20M people probably 30M soon, so they'll live in poverty, permanently.
In Rwanda an unusually good harvest means a new mine can be opened and they will "permanently" be richer. In Malawi an unusually good harvest means the people who would have starved to death this year now won't starve to death until next year. There will be no permanent improvement of anything in Malawi.
Rwanda serves as the occident's proxy to extract minerals from the kivu soil, it has been occupying it since the end of the genocide on the pretence of pursuing the genocidal troops that fled there.
There is absolutely no surprise here, it's rich becaus it plunders the richest soil on earth.
I honestly think the lack of education is a major issue. Malawi has a relatively low literacy rate compared with many other countries in Southern Africa.
I spent a while sitting in Malawi pondering that. A while ago but I don't think it's changed much. In many ways it's not a poor as you'd think from the GDP figures - most people have housing and enough food and the place is friendly and pleasant. I figured a lot is due to the exchange rate making things cheap because they don't have a good source of foreign income. The exports are mostly agricultural stuff that doesn't go for much money and the other obvious thing of tourism and holiday homes doesn't work well because the malaria is terrible there.
In fact I see the article doesn't mention malaria but most places you go they say oh yeah there were some cases a year ago twenty miles ago but in Nkhata Bay when I was there it was like a thousand cases in the village and a backpacker went the the loos the previous night and was found dead beside them in the morning.
This was an interesting thread to read as a Malawian living right here in Malawi and frustrated about our situation. As the article mentions, we have a lot of things going for us that should have us in a better situation - very few natural disasters, no wars/civil unrest, even though the rains are sketchy sometimes we generally have good rainfall and even though we have challenges with food sometimes, it's rare to hear someone actually died of hunger.
However, there are a multitude of problems that have resulted in us being where we are. Now mind you, I am just a software engineer not a development expert (but for some credibility, I was the first engineer at Malawian owned Credit Reference Bureau and built most of the software there and I have worked with Social Cash Transfer program before as a consultant).
* Infrastructure is a big problem, we have poor road infrastructure, almost no rail or airline industry though those are picking up as of recent years. Very few Malawians have access to electricity, I believe some reports indicated less than 10%. Most of our population lives in rural areas. Internet penetration is growing but even cell tower coverage is not yet there - our TELCOS have about 3-4 million subscribers max, we are a population of about 20 million people (maybe 40% under 19?) and yet our largest bank only has about 2 or 3 million customers.
* We have low literacy rates and high dropout rates especially in rural areas. This is worrying for a population with almost half being youth/children. Our school infrastructure is also not that great, it is not strange to find a class of students learning under a tree in some rural and peri-urban areas.
* Corruption and mismanagement of funds - this is a big problem here. A lot of the money in the government programs and NGO/Donor programs finds it's way into individuals' pockets. Some of the initiatives are well meaning but because of corruption and pilfering of funds the impact isn't always felt at the level that's expected.
* Mismanagement of Natural resources - we have deposits of gold, rutile, uranium and other materials - we have companies from Australia/China and the likes setting up and possibly benefitting without giving much back to the country besides some veiled Corporate Social Responsibility activities, with parts of the funds going into people's pockets - we need to do better to control our resources but the low literacy rates and lack of awareness of some of these things affects how we as citizens react.
* There's lots online about our agriculture, so I won't spend too much time there - only to say we need to do better to mechanize and not rely too much on the rain cycles. I'm saying this as someone who has gotten into farming recently and is frustrated by how... manual it all is :)
There's a lot more I could say but I hope this give somewhat of a picture.
I should just mention, Malawians are some of the brightest most hardworking people you will ever meet but also trustworthy and loyal. You will probably meet a Malawian doctor in any part of the world and our software engineers are getting there too, we just need the exposure and opportunity to prove ourselves. I help moderate a community of developers and I can tell you we have talent and we do come cheap (even as low as $25/hr ;)
If you are ever in the market to try working with some Malawians, contact is on the profile :)
addaon | 10 hours ago
This sounds like an extremely bimodal distribution -- a 40% increase in the cut-off line only captures 5% more of the population, so only a small number of people are in this "poor but survivable" zone, with most well under and some well over, I assume. Does this map to the usual rural/urban divide?
erxam | 10 hours ago
There have been two gigantic continent-wide wars over the Congo, for fuck's sake.
rwyinuse | 10 hours ago
I have no idea if Rwanda and Malawi have difference there, but globally one can see clearly see the impact of culture. Just look at how well Japan did despite losing WW2 and having little natural resources, or how badly Russia has done despite its huge landmass and resources, because the political culture always seems to lead to really bad autocratic governance.
In my country (Finland) areas where Swedish speaking people are the majority do consistently better than neighbouring areas with Finnish speaking majority - lower unemployment, less health and social issues and so on. Some of that may be due to historical accumulation of wealth, but I'm convinced that mostly it's because of differences in cultural values and attitudes. Some studies indicate that the Swedish speakers tend to have better social life, which improves life outcomes in many ways.
RobotToaster | 10 hours ago
SoftTalker | 10 hours ago
Henchman21 | 8 hours ago
tmnvix | 7 hours ago
I've often thought there's something wrong with the way we put a simple dollar figure on poverty. Less than $3 dollars a day with or without easy access to land, shelter, and fresh water?
Geee | 7 hours ago
peterfirefly | 10 hours ago
ViktorRay | 10 hours ago
Are you implying that a dictator would lead to Malawi becoming wealthy? Seems like a disturbing argument. If that’s not what you are implying then what are you implying?
therein | 10 hours ago
To lead a country to prosperity is as simple as letting a nation vote and counting their votes and then giving power to the guy they voted for?
jurgenburgen | 8 hours ago
ZhadruOmjar | 9 hours ago
amoorthy | 10 hours ago
nradov | 10 hours ago
NooneAtAll3 | 9 hours ago
snypher | 9 hours ago
inemesitaffia | 9 hours ago
seszett | 9 hours ago
em-bee | 8 hours ago
so clearly who does better has nothing to do with the language but with the economy and who has the better resources and is more adaptable to serve the current needs.
boelboel | 4 hours ago
Saying language had no influence on who did better is inaccurate.
em-bee | an hour ago
but what i meant to say is that language does not have an influence in an absolute sense in that say dutch speakers would always do better than french speakers or something like that because of the language somehow giving them an advantage. the advantage comes from being part of the group that is in power.
amoorthy | 2 hours ago
giacomoforte | 8 hours ago
Your examples of Russia and Japan are easily explained by geopolitics. Indeed, Japanese individuals don't tend to excel out of Japan while many Russians do.
carlosjobim | 7 hours ago
And people define victory in different ways. Having many children is how some people define victory. Having no children and a diploma on the wall is how some people define victory.
pavlov | 10 hours ago
> 'The unit of analysis for "why is X poor" may be the political coalition, not the country.'
So maybe the real question here is not about the absolute poverty, but the derivative: "Why hasn't Malawi seen meaningful growth for 30 years?" — And the answer could be surprisingly related to first-world countries like Finland that also have experienced decades of stunted growth.
Like Malawi, Finland has functional and stable multiparty politics. Like Malawi, Finland's politicians have spent decades locally optimizing for minor benefits towards their preferred flavor of the median voter (right wing cuts taxes a bit, left wing improves benefits a bit, nobody offers anything transformative).
Too much stability at the wrong time might be a slow curse.
tdb7893 | 10 hours ago
yorwba | 10 hours ago
Geee | 6 hours ago
xandrius | 10 hours ago
- Malawi: tobacco (55%), dried legumes (8.8%), sugar (6.7%), tea (5.7%), cotton (2%), peanuts, coffee, soy (2015 est.)
- Rwanda: Gold, tin ores, coffee, malt extract, rare earth ores
I can easily see why one has a higher GDP than the other. Very little mistery to me.
exe34 | 10 hours ago
alephnerd | 10 hours ago
[0] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.ODA.ODAT.GN.ZS?locat...
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/rwanda-exercises-comman...
londons_explore | 10 hours ago
For the loan cases, the terms are often unaffordable, effectively handing effective control of the entire country to the entity who has the other end of the loan - it is the modern empire-by-debt.
sofixa | 10 hours ago
A lot of foreign aid is direct things like food, medicine, doctors, AIDS prevention programmes, vaccines for specific things, maternal care, containment of an Ebola epidemic, etc.
Do you really think that e.g. Kenya is voting alongside EU members because the EU paid for a part of a highway between two cities in Kenya?
Then yes, there are loans and grants for infrastructure things.
> For the loan cases, the terms are often unaffordable, effectively handing effective control of the entire country to the entity who has the other end of the loan - it is the modern empire-by-debt.
That's not true. The rates are very public, and while sometimes they are on the higher end, unaffordable is a stretch, and that's how loan rates work. It is inherently risky to give loans to a developing country with high corruption rates. That's why there are also lots of direct grants or direct physical aid with stuff instead of money.
The IMF also sometimes gives loans with strict requirements on market reforms, which can be controversial. Notably in the former Soviet/Warsaw pact bloc, economic shock therapy under instruction of the IMF had some devastating short term consequences, and in some countries led to mass dubious privtisations. In most though, it paid off and led to rapid and sustained economic and social growth.
alephnerd | 3 hours ago
I'm honestly disheartened by how much HN has degraded into Reddit now.
bigyabai | an hour ago
edbaskerville | 10 hours ago
alephnerd | 9 hours ago
On the other hand, Kagame's execution on economic reform has been a failure when compared against Uganda, as Uganda [0] has a significantly more complex (ie. higher value) economy than Rwanda [1] despite also suffering a severe civil war in the 1990s and dealing with the Idi Amin's kleptocratic rule in the 1980s.
[0] - https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/800/export-basket
[1] - https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/646/export-basket
sofixa | 10 hours ago
For both, around half of GDP is in the services sector. It doesn't matter that much what raw resources they export when it's a smaller portion of GDP (23% in Rwanda, 15% in Malawi). Also, almost all of those raw resources that Rwanda exports are stolen from the DRC by Rwanda-backed militias.
Foreign aid, and Rwanda's ability to position itself geopolitically as a trusted stable partner (which enables more aid and for it to get away with theft and murder) have more impact than maize vs gold.
And in the end, there are plenty of countries that have successfully developed and become less or not poor without having anything of serious value to export. From Bangladesh to the Balkans (I mean post-decolonisation Balkans, not post-Iron Curtain - it was mostly an area with subsistence farming as the main employment, disease, low rates of literacy and very low for higher education, frequent conflict and ethnic/religious tensions, few natural resources other than grain and some very limited amounts coal/minerals). If anything, it usually is the opposite, cf. the resource curse.
boelboel | 10 hours ago
ExpertAdvisor01 | 10 hours ago
nearbuy | 10 hours ago
elmomle | 9 hours ago
abigail95 | 9 hours ago
cylemons | 2 hours ago
aaronbrethorst | 9 hours ago
jonathanlydall | 9 hours ago
They’re both good people with pride in their work, but they are from poverty and have little in the way of skills except for manual labour jobs.
They came to South Africa, like so many from nearby countries, as our significantly more developed economy offers far better earning opportunity.
Not relevant to your comment, but want to also mention this creates xenophobic tension with the section of the local population which is in poverty as they feel their jobs are stolen. While there are certainly cases where people illegally employ immigrants to pay them less than locals, in cases where pay is at least equal, Zimbabweans and Malawians tend to have reputation of being more honest and hard working than the indigenous population.
We have Nigerians come here too and by contrast they tend to be super scetchy.
doodlebugging | 8 hours ago
*********
I live in North Texas and my gardener happens to be Mexican, as was a gardener my parents had when I was growing up.
They’re both good people with pride in their work, but they are from poverty and have little in the way of skills except for manual labor jobs.
They came to North Texas, like so many from nearby countries, as our significantly more developed economy offers far better earning opportunity.
Not relevant to your comment, but want to also mention this creates xenophobic tension with the section of the local population which is in poverty as they feel their jobs are stolen. While there are certainly cases where people illegally employ immigrants to pay them less than locals, in cases where pay is at least equal, Hondurans and Mexicans tend to have reputation of being more honest and hard working than the indigenous population.
We have Floridians come here too and by contrast they tend to be super sketchy.
********
I read your original comment and was struck by how well it fits the situation here in Texas. You could've made the same comment about South Africa 40 years ago and it would still translate to the situation in Texas.
I don't know how you feel about people coming to South Africa for a shot at a better life but have to say that I have the highest respect for those men and women who have left their homes and families across the border for an uncertain future here in the US despite knowing that it is quite true that in many jobs they will be paid less than locals who do less actual work. All of this while being gamed by employers who know that they are illegally in the country and who work closely with Immigration Officials to identify people who can be quickly rounded up and sent south to pad some politician's resume or to distract the public from some other more significant issue. The employers never suffer consequences though they are the ones who created the opportunity and actively assisted in concealing immigration status for many of the workers.
It is a complex issue that should be solvable but as long as there are powerless people to heap the blame on we will probably see this continue.
jonathanlydall | 7 hours ago
And yes, it’s a complex issue for sure.
I’m convinced that the way out of poverty here is through education and sadly there is just a huge amount of apathy (when not corruption) at all levels here by the people who are supposed to be making it happen, from pupils, their parents, teachers, etc, all the way to the minister of education.
Meanwhile people like me pay huge amounts of tax and still need to pay for private schooling for my kids, private security and medical aid.
Essentially, most of the money I pay for tax is a charity intended for the poor, but due to apathy/incompetence/corruption, not nearly enough of it gets used effectively.
doodlebugging | 5 hours ago
The wrong people capturing the resources that were earmarked for useful purposes and using them to enrich themselves.
autoexec | 8 hours ago
When it comes to mining it looks like china has been screwing them over https://adf-magazine.com/2026/02/chinese-mines-openly-break-...
red-iron-pine | 8 hours ago
asdff | 8 hours ago
The fact that there is little mining of the natural resources in Malawi paints a picture of a government that might be less influenced by foreign money than others in the global south, moreso than any statement on poverty.
WillAdams | 10 hours ago
https://www.heifer.org/our-work/where-we-work/malawi
Currently being matched 5 to 1.
csomar | 10 hours ago
There isn't much in Africa especially in the part of Malawi. They are not even coastal (they are landlocked) which makes their situation even worse.
nine_k | 9 hours ago
forinti | 10 hours ago
ascorbic | 10 hours ago
forinti | 10 hours ago
nine_k | 9 hours ago
alephnerd | 10 hours ago
Starting from a lower base as well as weak institutions, weak capital markets, and political instability during the transition to democracy lead Malawi to underperform.
Additionally, Rwanda received massive amounts of foreign aid to a degree that Malawi and other African nations never saw [1]
Unsurprising that this is an OpenPhilanthropy blog.
[0] - https://countryeconomy.com/hdi?year=1990
[1] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.ODA.ODAT.GN.ZS?locat...
vondur | 10 hours ago
Joker_vD | 10 hours ago
That's the product they have most comparative advantage in producing. You're literally suggesting they should cut their income down, and try to get better at something else.
AnimalMuppet | 9 hours ago
But as you say, at least in the interim, that means reducing income, which is a really hard thing to suggest.
vondur | 9 hours ago
sb057 | 10 hours ago
alephnerd | 10 hours ago
A lot of Rwanda's success is overstated as well as I've pointed out before [1].
A better model from an LDC perspective would probably be Uganda.
[0] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.ODA.ODAT.GN.ZS?locat...
[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43375524
rdtsc | 10 hours ago
I would still guess corruption is a major reason. Sometimes the way it’s measured and how it’s reported is not accurate. People internalize corrupt practices as normal and stop viewing it as corruption. A bribe is a gift, a nepotistic appointment is “taking care of one’s family”.
It also doesn’t always make sense to compare only corruption with other countries. Some may be more corrupt but they have enough positive factors that they develop better despite the corruption.
nradov | 10 hours ago
dudeinjapan | 10 hours ago
rdtsc | 9 hours ago
But yeah, what you’re saying is also done. Usually something like an anti-corruption ministry is created. Their job is to find and prosecute corruption. Guess what the most “lucrative “ and cushiest jobs are now - that’s right, the anti corruption ministry itself. Anyone doing business now has to bribe them too in addition to whoever they bribed before. And corruption goes “down” officially, and it looks good on international external metrics.
bluGill | 8 hours ago
marcosdumay | 10 hours ago
It's more dependent on the press reporting corruption than of any other factor, for the extent that it measures anything real it focuses exclusively on small scale corruption, and it incredibly biased by cultural factors.
It's a mistake to use it to compare one country with another, and it's a mistake to use it to spot trends in a single place. AFAIK, it's a mistake to use it.
MichaelZuo | 7 hours ago
Such an exceedingly complex thing just seems improbable to take at face value, without an enormous amount of proof and well reasoned methodology backing it up.
marcosdumay | 6 hours ago
A few times they notice that fighting against corruption is known to increase the index at a footnote somewhere. But that's rare.
yk | 10 hours ago
I used to make the same error. Thing is in the natural sciences this looks like circular reasoning, but in the humanities quite commonly things just hang in thin air. Case in point, the banker looks at the poor farmer and denies credit because the guy doesn't have capital, and the farmer doesn't have capital because he can't get credit. Thing is, both sides understand that.
nikanj | 10 hours ago
asdff | 8 hours ago
But Finland obviously has other economic sectors to rely upon than mainly farming.
1. https://scotthirwin.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/02212023_...
VLM | 8 hours ago
About 5M people, a fifth the population of Malawi, none the less are one of the top producers in the entire world for oats and barley. Not per capita... total. Wow. Note that only about 10% of the population farms which makes the ratio even crazier.
Finns as a whole somehow produce about 2x their entire countries body weight in barley per year which always freaks me out. The country is also one of the top 10, usually top 5, producers of oats in the entire world, and they're competing with giant countries like Canada and Russia. Giant Canada only produces about 3x as much oats as tiny Finland.
Finland climate isn't what you'd think of for tomatoes but they produce about three dozen tomatoes per capita every year, which is also weird to think about. Not just how do they grow that many tomatoes, but why? They like pasta sauce and pizza sauce that much?
However Finland is not massively wildly overpopulated with frequent famines like Malawi. Those conditions will annihilate a countries productivity, including ag productivity.
strken | 9 hours ago
black6 | 9 hours ago
Maybe the population doesn't feel like it needs to be productive, if they're continuing to receive such generous largesses. Isn't that the goal of UBI for developed nations? People should be able to pursue their passions and not have to worry about the necessities of life?
JumpCrisscross | 9 hours ago
Idk, this one doesn't seem super difficult to diagnose. The political system has been captured by a special interest with consolidated control.
rafram | 8 hours ago
JumpCrisscross | 8 hours ago
Special interests, yes. Consolidation–as in a unified interest group representing a commanding majority of the economy–no. At least none that aren’t similarly stagnating.
snitzr | 8 hours ago
VLM | 8 hours ago
I rooted around in wikipedia and Malawi has FAR more people than the land can support. They have a top down demand they must grow maize although the land and climate are very unsuited for maize. Why? Unsurprisingly they have had severe recent famines unlike Rwanda. If they had capacity they could survive a minor shortfall in rain but they have more people than the land can support so the famines are very rough. They have about 3x the agricultural land as Rwanda but its not suited to maize but its demanded they grow maize. Maize will only grow with massive fertilizer imports which they cannot afford and occasionally politically/economically manage to totally screw up, alongside Maize is traditionally dependent on very reliable rainfall or post industrial era advanced irrigation which they don't have.
I would estimate the geography of Rwanda will support about 20M people, luckily they have about 14M. They can coast thru some rough agricultural times and they've developed enough industry and trade that they can import their way thru short term minor local problems.
On the other hand Malawi can only support maybe 15M people reliably, unfortunately they have about 22M. When the rains don't come or the politicians screw up the fertilizer imports, they die.
Its very difficult for them to "advance" beyond subsistence ag without enough to feed everyone and ag policies seemingly intended to be self destructive.
I don't know why they "have to" grow maize despite it resulting in starvation. Historically this type of thing is caused by someone making a huge profit or attempting to maintain control. Regardless of cause, until they can eat, they will not advance.
After eating dinner tonight they can dig a mine or build a factory. Oh wait there is no dinner tonight. Well then. And so they remain very poor, permanently.
The country, as a plot of land, is quite wealthy. $22B is a lot of money. If they had, say, 3M people as a population they'd be in position to become the next Taiwan. Taiwan's GDP per capita was about there in the mid 80s before they really took off. But they have over 20M people probably 30M soon, so they'll live in poverty, permanently.
In Rwanda an unusually good harvest means a new mine can be opened and they will "permanently" be richer. In Malawi an unusually good harvest means the people who would have starved to death this year now won't starve to death until next year. There will be no permanent improvement of anything in Malawi.
grimblee | 8 hours ago
hamid_wakili | 8 hours ago
tmnvix | 7 hours ago
And yes, debt can be 'good'. But just as for people, if you are poverty stricken, debt will almost invariably not be.
Who actually benefited from taking on the debt?
tim333 | 6 hours ago
In fact I see the article doesn't mention malaria but most places you go they say oh yeah there were some cases a year ago twenty miles ago but in Nkhata Bay when I was there it was like a thousand cases in the village and a backpacker went the the loos the previous night and was found dead beside them in the morning.
zikani_03 | 6 hours ago
However, there are a multitude of problems that have resulted in us being where we are. Now mind you, I am just a software engineer not a development expert (but for some credibility, I was the first engineer at Malawian owned Credit Reference Bureau and built most of the software there and I have worked with Social Cash Transfer program before as a consultant).
* Infrastructure is a big problem, we have poor road infrastructure, almost no rail or airline industry though those are picking up as of recent years. Very few Malawians have access to electricity, I believe some reports indicated less than 10%. Most of our population lives in rural areas. Internet penetration is growing but even cell tower coverage is not yet there - our TELCOS have about 3-4 million subscribers max, we are a population of about 20 million people (maybe 40% under 19?) and yet our largest bank only has about 2 or 3 million customers.
* We have low literacy rates and high dropout rates especially in rural areas. This is worrying for a population with almost half being youth/children. Our school infrastructure is also not that great, it is not strange to find a class of students learning under a tree in some rural and peri-urban areas.
* Corruption and mismanagement of funds - this is a big problem here. A lot of the money in the government programs and NGO/Donor programs finds it's way into individuals' pockets. Some of the initiatives are well meaning but because of corruption and pilfering of funds the impact isn't always felt at the level that's expected.
* Mismanagement of Natural resources - we have deposits of gold, rutile, uranium and other materials - we have companies from Australia/China and the likes setting up and possibly benefitting without giving much back to the country besides some veiled Corporate Social Responsibility activities, with parts of the funds going into people's pockets - we need to do better to control our resources but the low literacy rates and lack of awareness of some of these things affects how we as citizens react.
* There's lots online about our agriculture, so I won't spend too much time there - only to say we need to do better to mechanize and not rely too much on the rain cycles. I'm saying this as someone who has gotten into farming recently and is frustrated by how... manual it all is :)
There's a lot more I could say but I hope this give somewhat of a picture.
I should just mention, Malawians are some of the brightest most hardworking people you will ever meet but also trustworthy and loyal. You will probably meet a Malawian doctor in any part of the world and our software engineers are getting there too, we just need the exposure and opportunity to prove ourselves. I help moderate a community of developers and I can tell you we have talent and we do come cheap (even as low as $25/hr ;)
If you are ever in the market to try working with some Malawians, contact is on the profile :)
ViktorRay | 4 hours ago
dzonga | 6 hours ago
at times a strategic leadership is needed, with idealogical & succession planning.
Malawi has had neither.