Children of estate tenants and workers show high levels of malnutrition. UNICEF's MIS
study, in 1995, showed that estate children had slightly higher levels of stunting than average, and
almost 50 percent higher rates of wasting.

 Estates are quite geographically concentrated, particularly in the Central region. Almost
40 percent of the total are located in Kasungu, Mchinji and Lilongwe. In fact nearly half the
population of Kasungu is made up of tenant households, which is undoubtedly a factor in Kasungu
having the highest malnutrition rates in the country, in spite of having a low vulnerability index
in the FEWS indicators.9

 The data available on income are less reliable for the estate sector than for smallholders.
However the figures reported indicate that income levels in the two sectors may be similar.
Whereas some tenant farmers may do very well, others have difficulty making enough income to
feed their families. These are most likely to work on small estates. Where tenants have access
to land for subsistence farming this provides an important additional source of income. What data
exist indicate that this is more likely to occur on larger estates, and therefore is unlikely to benefit
poorer estate tenants. The situation for poor tenants may have improved somewhat with the
introduction of the intermediate buyer system, which has provided competition for the estates as
tobacco outlets. This could force estates to offer better terms to their tenants. The high levels
of child malnutrition are a concern. These may result from poor environmental conditions and
lack of health services, combined with low household income. High labour demands on tenant
spouses may also affect childcare practices.

1.3 The Urban Poor

 Major cities in Malawi have the lowest prevalence of poverty, and an urban household is
half as likely as a rural household to be poor. The main exception to this is Lilongwe, where
there is twice the level of households below the 20th percentile as in any other Malawian city.
The main information on urban poverty comes from work done by the Centre for Social Research
in Zomba in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

 The urban population was estimated at 11 percent of the total in the 1987 census. Most
work on poverty estimation has put the size of the urban population at about 9 percent, but UNDP
estimates that by 1993 urban population growth rates were such that the urban population
comprised 15 percent of the total.



 9 FEWS have developed a composite vulnerability index, for use in targeting social
programs. However, since the estate sector has been largely excluded from monitoring
systems up until now, because of lack of an appropriate data collection structure, in areas like
Kasungu where estates are important, the information included in the vulnerability index is
inevitably very partial.


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