using urban examples from the Sub-Saharan African continent and also from east Asia. It is an exploration, in microcosm, of wider concerns and constraints on urban discourse, generalized over two continents to try to understand how particular responses to environmental and developmental issues are generated. It also explores how those responses are often not the result of free choice, democratic engagement, or sovereign will.
Malawi is a landlocked country bordered by Mozambique, Zambia, and Tanzania, with a border alongside and across Lake Malawi, one of Africa’s Great Lakes. The region was arguably first brought to global attention by David Livingstone’s missionary adventures up the Zambesi river in the mid-nineteenth century, an expedition that was intended to bring trade and Scottish Presbyterianism to remote regions in central Africa. As a consequence of this imperial adventure,1 large swathes of land became part of Britain’s colonial spoils: the nascent country of Malawi initially fell under British Protectorate status in various guises (including Nyasaland, tied to northern Rhodesia), and finally gained independence in 1964 under the government of President Hastings Banda.
Approximately 9,000 km northeast of Malawi’s national capital Lilongwe lies the vast land mass of China, the most populous nation on earth. China is second only to the USA in national net worth, is over 60% urbanized, and – until coronavirus – was the fastest growing major economy in the world. This industrial, commercial, economic, and urban “growth miracle”2 has occurred within one’s lifetime, transforming the perspectives, lifestyles, and life chances of Chinese people within a generation. Its economy grew at an average rate of 10% since Deng Xiaoping initiated market reforms in 1978. One of its territories – Hong Kong Special Administrative Region – has just 1% of Malawi’s land area but creates a GDP that is 2,500% larger.
These two wildly diverse locations, histories, and economies, one in east Africa, one in east Asia, are united by the “fact” that neither of them is officially classified as a “developed” country. This anomaly is primarily because their GDP per capita falls below the internationally recognized benchmark for developed economic status. Malawi is clearly one of the most underdeveloped nations on Earth, while the economic behemoth of China is classified as a “developing” nation even though China’s GDP is likely to rival America in the coming decade. Its “developing” status is due to the fact that its GDP share per head of population is still woefully low at around 15% of that of the USA. Partly because of its vast population, China’s GDP per head is US$9,700 (compared to US$62,970 per person in the USA). Malawi’s GDP languishes at around US$390 per person.
When President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, he promised that China would become a “moderately well-off society” by 2021. That date coincides with the 100th anniversary of the formation of the Chinese Communist Party, and so there is a lot of political credibility riding on its realization. For almost 40 years, China experienced double-digit growth year on year, while Malawi’s growth potential in 2017 was estimated at around 3.7–4.4% and from a much weaker base.
Since 1980, China’s urban population has risen from 11% to over 60% (with the number of Chinese cities rising from 193 to the current level of 653).3 Malawi’s urban population was 11% in 1990,4 rising to 17% today.5 The disparities are not always straightforward, and even though Malawi also has 17.5 million of its population living on less than US$5.50 a day, China has 373 million in the same situation (albeit Malawian poverty represents 97% of the population compared to 26% of the entire Chinese population6).
Neither China-watchers nor financial specialists predicted the destabilizing effects of COVID-19 and the ultimate impact of a global pandemic on economies large and small. The consequences are yet to be revealed (and hence outside the scope of this contribution), so this chapter is intended merely to explore the generalized relationship of development and sustainable development using historical precedent. Through the prism of urbanization, this chapter compares two significantly differing countries – Malawi and China – and their communalities and differences, ambitions and challenges.
We will explore how Malawi, among many other African states, is still in hock to supranational finance and how any escape from subjugation needs to overcome environmental constraints. We will cast an eye over the dynamic shift in the direction of trade to see whether it is changing the terms of the debate. And we will look at the various historic and contemporary forces holding back – or in China’s case, liberating – development.
Emerging from History
Malawi in its former guise was a country clearly held back by conflicting colonial ambitions during the Scramble for Africa at the turn of the twentieth century. The political and economic rivalries played out primarily between Britain and Portugal over the financing of railway infrastructure, amongst other things, ended with the country having to foot the bill for a rail network primarily designed for and demanded by foreign powers. The loan repayments imposed on Nyasaland for this and other infrastructure investments were punitive. Writing about events prior to and after the First World War, Leroy Vail, a specialist in African studies, says that the British Treasury “helpfully suggested that Nyasaland should practise economies and increase her taxes so as to meet the guarantee charges she was facing … the Treasury was not impressed by the entreaties from Nyasaland, and the Protectorate entered upon what a later governor called ‘the Times of Starvation’. Nyasaland was henceforth prevented from devoting her revenues to such things as African education, medical services, road building, agricultural development and the establishment of veterinary service.”7
From such penurious and exploitative beginnings, Malawi continued to be mired in debt. Sixty years on from independence, the country remains one of the world’s poorest in the world. According to the World Bank, 51.5% of the population live in poverty, agriculture is the primary source of employment, and only 11.4% of the population have access to electricity.8 Even now, the country’s manufacturing industry is virtually non-existent.
Poverty, in terms of US$ per day, is a measure that doesn’t adequately do justice to the grinding privation of a country like Malawi that remains one of the most densely populated countries in Africa and yet one of the least urbanized, with more than 80% of its population living in rural areas. In 2013, the World Bank ranked Malawi 171 out of 189 countries to do business in. By 2020, it had risen to 109th (Eritrea is 189th). But the fact that a supranational institution has flagged up that foreign investors should be alert to the opportunities to make a profit in Malawi is not necessarily a good thing. Malawi is in desperate need of investment and financial assistance, but such external intervention has long imposed an overbearing and patrician burden on society.
Rural poverty continues to increase and Malawi requires significant development to pull it out of poverty. While “sustainable” development is the new préfixe du jour, it is premised on restraint and the precautionary principle rather than on societal ambitions and transcending “basic needs”.9 As one (controversial) US policy analyst writes, “Poor countries need sustained development, not sustainable development, if they are ever to take … their rightful place among the Earth’s prosperous people.”10 Conversely, a recent submission to the UK’s International Development Committee dealing with Malawi’s priorities condemned its development and population growth and lauded the country’s “direct dependence on natural resources”. It resolved that Malawi “must conserve its valuable environmental resources”, noting that the government “faces many challenges including … satisfying foreign donors that fiscal discipline is being tightened”.11 Neocolonialism aside, a modernization, industrialization, and urbanization strategy surely cannot be built on those flimsy fawning foundations (Figure 3.2).
Figure 3.2 The stifled development of Lilongwe, Malawi. (Source:
