Professor Jonathan Kydd (born 1951 in Hemel Hempstead) is a leading expert in Agricultural Development Economics, has examined the demand and supply constraints affecting poor farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, and has argued for dramatic policy reform and increased attention to governance issues in the region.[1] Professor Kydd garnered notoriety for his analysis of the 2001/2002 food crisis in Malawi,[2]Malawi's redeployment of labour in the 1970s,[3] and his analysis of Zambia's transition to coffee crops.[4]
Professor Kydd is currently Dean of the University of London International Programmes (which has a current enrolment of over 50,000 students) and Visiting Professor at the Imperial College London.[5] Prior to his appointment at the University of London, Professor Kydd was Director of the Distance Learning Programme, Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London, which focuses on international development and poverty reduction, sustainability, environment, biodiversity, economics and agribusiness. While in the latter role, Professor Kydd was instrumental in helping to create the MSc in Applied Environmental Economics, a programme which now boasts over 1000 students and over 40 courses.[6]
Professor Kydd has extensive experience in Africa (he was Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Malawi in the early 1980s[7]) and the natural resources sector, together with a particular interest in the role of the private sector in development. His subject expertise is in agricultural policy analysis (especially links between the agricultural sector and the macro economy); economic liberalisation and structural adjustment; the role of the agricultural sector in the transition from central planning to the market; rural development and finance; food security and agricultural projects.[8]
Professor Kydd is a non-executive director of CDC Plc, a leading private equity investor in emerging markets.[9]
Notes
↑ Poulton, Kydd and Dorward, "Overcoming Market Constraints on Pro-Poor Agricultural Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa" Development Policy Review, Vol. 24, No. 3, pp. 243-277, May 2006
↑ Kydd, Dorward and Vaughan, "The Humanitarian Crisis in Southern Africa: Malawi," Submission to the International Development Committee, October 2002
↑ Christiansen and Kydd, "The Return of Malawian Labour from South Africa and Zimbabwe" The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 21, No. 2. (Jun., 1983), pp. 311-326.
↑ Kydd, "Coffee after Copper? Structural Adjustment, Liberalisation, and Agriculture in Zambia" The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 26, No. 2. (Jun., 1988), pp. 227-251.
Malawi, officially the Republic of Malawi and formerly known as Nyasaland, is a landlocked country in Southeastern Africa. It is bordered by Zambia to the west, Tanzania to the north and northeast, and Mozambique to the east, south, and southwest. Malawi spans over 118,484 km2 (45,747 sq mi) and has an estimated population of 19,431,566. Malawi's capital and largest city is Lilongwe. Its second-largest is Blantyre, its third-largest is Mzuzu, and its fourth-largest is Zomba, the former capital.
The economy of Malawi is $7.522 billion by gross domestic product as of 2019, and is predominantly agricultural, with about 80% of the population living in rural areas. The landlocked country in south central Africa ranks among the world's least developed countries. In 2017, agriculture accounted for about one-third of GDP and about 80% of export revenue. The economy depends on substantial inflows of economic assistance from the IMF, the World Bank, and individual donor nations. The government faces strong challenges: to spur exports, to improve educational and health facilities, to face up to environmental problems of deforestation and erosion, and to deal with the problem of HIV/AIDS in Africa. Malawi is a least developed country according to United Nations.
Southern Africa is the southernmost region of Africa. No definition is agreed upon, but some groupings include the United Nations geoscheme, the intergovernmental Southern African Development Community, and the physical geography definition based on the physical characteristics of the land.
Blantyre is Malawi's centre of finance and commerce, and its second largest city, with a population of 800,264 as of 2018. It is sometimes referred to as the commercial and industrial capital of Malawi as opposed to the political capital, Lilongwe. It is the capital of the country's Southern Region as well as the Blantyre District.
Bingu wa Mutharika was a Malawian politician and economist who was President of Malawi from May 2004 until his death in April 2012. He was also President of the Democratic Progressive Party, which he founded in February 2005; it obtained a majority in Malawi's parliament in the 2009 general election.
Malawi is one of the world's undeveloped countries and is ranked 170 out of 187 countries according to the 2010 Human Development Index. It has about 16 million people, 53% of whom live under the national poverty line and 90% of whom live on less than $2 per day.
The main economic products of Malawi are tobacco, tea, cotton, groundnuts, sugar and coffee. These have been among the main cash crops for the last century, but tobacco has become increasingly predominant in the last quarter-century, with a production in 2011 of 175,000 tonnes. Over the last century, tea and groundnuts have increased in relative importance while cotton has decreased. The main food crops are maize, cassava, sweet potatoes, sorghum, bananas, rice, and Irish potatoes and cattle, sheep and goats are raised. The main industries deal with agricultural processing of tobacco, tea and sugar and timber products. The industrial production growth rate is estimated at 10% (2009).
The United States established diplomatic relations with Malawi in 1964 after Malawi gained independence from the United Kingdom. Malawi's transition from a one-party state to a multi-party democracy significantly strengthened the already cordial U.S. relationship with Malawi. Significant numbers of Malawians study in the United States. The United States has an active Peace Corps program, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Health and Human Services, and an Agency for International Development (USAID) mission in Malawi. Both countries have a common history and English language, as they were part of the British Empire.
Tobacco production in Malawi is one of the nation's largest sources of income. As of 2005, Malawi was the twelfth-largest producer of tobacco leaves and the 7th largest global supporter of tobacco leaves. As of 2010, Malawi was the world's leading producer of burley leaf tobacco. With the decline of tobacco farms in the West, interest in Malawi's low-grade, high-nicotine tobacco has increased. Today, Malawian tobacco is found in blends of nearly every cigarette smoked in industrialized nations including the popular and ubiquitous Camel and Marlboro brands. It is the world's most tobacco dependent economy. In 2013 Malawi produced about 133,000 tonnes of tobacco leaf, a reduction from a maximum of 208,000 tonnes in 2009 and although annual production was maintained at similar levels in 2014 and 2015, prices fell steadily from 2013 to 2017, in part because of weakening world demand but also because of declining quality.
Arthur Peter Mutharika is a Malawian politician and lawyer who was President of Malawi from May 2014 to June 2020. Mutharika has worked in the field of international justice, specialising in international economic law, international law and comparative constitutional law. He informally served as an adviser to his older brother, President Bingu wa Mutharika, on issues of foreign and domestic policy from the onset of his election campaign until the President's death on 5 April 2012.
The International Growth Centre (IGC) is an economic research centre based at the London School of Economics, operated in partnership with University of Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government.
Opinions about the role of fertilizer subsidies in spurring agricultural development in Sub-Saharan Africa have fluctuated significantly over the past five decades. Many experts believe that fertilizer subsidies represent an essential method for achieving long term food security in Sub-Saharan Africa, while providing social support to Africa's poorest subsistence farmers. Yet previous universal subsidy schemes enjoyed only moderate success, raising concerns about whether the market distortions subsidies introduce can ever lead to a sustainable agricultural system. New practices in creating more targeted subsidies may be the key to achieving durable success.
Malawian diaspora refers to Malawian citizens and foreign nationals of Malawian descent who relocate—temporarily or permanently—to foreign countries. There are no reliable figures on how many Malawians live abroad. Populations of Malawians can be found in the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia. Malawians have historically been an important supply of both skilled and unskilled labor to other countries. Malawians were a source of labor to the diamond and gold mines in Southern Africa, particularly South Africa. Many Malawian health professionals have migrated to the Global North in search of employment. The migration of skilled labor has contributed to the brain drain that is affecting many African nations.
The agricultural system in Sub-Saharan Africa is a predominantly small-scale farming system with more than 50% of the agricultural activity performed by women, producing about 60-70% of the food in this region. While women provide the majority of the labor in agricultural production, their access and control over productive resources is greatly constrained due to inequalities constructed by patriarchal norms.
Eastern and Southern African Management Institute, or ESAMI is a diplomatic regional management development institute owned by various governments in the Sub-Saharan Africa region. Established in 1980, the Institute has its headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania.
The Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation, usually known as ADMARC, was formed in Malawi in 1971 as a government-owned corporation or parastatal to promote the Malawian economy by increasing the volume and quality of its agricultural exports, to develop new foreign markets for the consumption of Malawian agricultural produce and to support Malawi's farmers. it was the successor of a number of separate marketing boards of the colonial-era and early post-colonial times, whose functions were as much about controlling African smallholders or generating government revenues as in promoting agricultural development. At its foundation, ADMARC was given the power to finance the economic development of any public or private organisation, agricultural or not.
The African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (AFAAS), is an African organization for strengthening Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services (AEAS) in Africa. It operates within the framework of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), a venture of the African Union in the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). AFAAS is an autonomous subsidiary of the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA).
Thandika Mkandawire was a Malawian economist and public intellectual who was a Chair of African Development and professor of African Development at the London School of Economics. He is a widely published scholar on the social sciences in Africa. His research focused in development theory and economic and social policy.
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Malawi is one of the least developed countries in the world. But it spends 1% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on research and development (R&D), making it have one of the highest ratios in Africa. The country has 93% of its population still lacking access to electricity, 47% of whom have improved sanitation, and one in four adults lacks any form of family planning.
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