Echoes of Empire: Unraveling the Pervasiveness of Colonial Environmental Injustice in Southern Malawi

Abstract

Environmental injustice remains a pressing issue in marginalized communities. This article, therefore, explores the pervasiveness of colonial environmental injustice in the postcolonial era with a focus on detrimental effects on marginalized communities in Thyolo and Mulanje districts of the Republic of Malawi in Southern Africa. During colonial rule, these areas were subjected to land confiscation and resource extraction, establishing environmental practices that left local communities landless and impoverished. The study examines how colonial legacies have continued to shape land ownership and environmental degradation. This enquiry is guided by three central questions: (1) What is the historical context of colonial environmental injustice in Mulanje and Thyolo? (2) How has colonial environmental injustice harmed the local communities of Mulanje and Thyolo? (3) why policy and legal instruments in postcolonial era fail to address the environmental injustice? Guided by settler colonialism, coloniality, and decoloniality theories, this study draws upon secondary sources, including academic literature, government reports, policy documents, and media articles, to identify patterns of environmental injustice and its socio-economic implications on local communities in the study area. The findings reveal a deliberate and systematic failure by postcolonial governments to address the inherited inequities in land tenure systems and environmental governance, leading to socio-economic disparities. By contextualizing the findings, this article suggests an overhaul of land policy with much consideration for the historical events that have shaped the land dispute between local people in the two districts and estate owners, who happen to be citizens of the former colonial master.

Keywords

environmental injustice postcolonial era settler colonialism coloniality decoloniality

INTRODUCTION

In most postcolonial African societies, the ruble of colonialism continues to shape the lives of the underprivileged profoundly. The inequalities entrenched during colonial rule have not only been maintained but often intensified in the postcolonial era, leading to an amplified version of environmental injustice that disproportionately impacts marginalized communities. Malawi, a nation heavily dependent on rain-fed agriculture, has faced persistent challenges regarding land distribution and ownership since its independence in 1964, as postcolonial governments have paid little or no attention to environmental injustice entrenched during the colonial regime. The southern districts of Thyolo and Mulanje exemplify this uncalled-for colonial legacy, which is deliberately being sustained to advance the interests of the political elites. Home to vast tea estates established during the colonial era, productive land in these two districts remains largely controlled by foreign multinational corporations. Although these plantations contribute to the national economy, they have marginalized local communities, mainly smallholder farmers, by restricting access to essential resources such as land, water, and forests.¹ Moreover, the environmental degradation stemming from these plantations, including deforestation, soil erosion, and water scarcity, further exacerbates socio-economic inequalities.² This situation illustrates the persistence of colonialism in a new and amplified version, which African scholars refer to as “coloniality.” This calls for scholarly debate on postcolonial Malawi’s decolonization efforts.

Unlike colonialism, which refers to direct political and economic domination, coloniality is the enduring legacy of colonial power structures that continue to shape knowledge, culture, labor, and governance long after formal independence.³ As Maldonado-Torres observes, coloniality is ever-present—“we breathe it all the time.”⁴ Observing the situation in Thyolo and Mulanje, one could be forgiven for thinking that Maldonado-Torres had spent time there, where the people truly ‘breathe coloniality all the time.’ The idea of coloniality was exclusively debated by thinkers such as Wilmot Blyden, Frantz Fanon, Kwame Nkrumah, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. These debates ultimately gave rise to decoloniality, an evolved form of anti-colonialism that critiques the elite-led nature of earlier struggles and calls for the creation of a truly postcolonial, humane social order.⁵ Kwame Nkrumah stands tall in decolonization efforts as he had been advocating for African self-determination from the very moment Ghana gained its independence. In his iconic 1957 speech, he declared, “As I said to the Assembly a few minutes ago, I made a point that we are going to create our own African personality and identity.” This powerful statement underscored his unwavering commitment to the decolonization agenda. For Nkrumah, forging a unique African identity was not just symbolic; it was the clearest declaration to the world that Africa was ready to chart its own course and fight its own battles. Therefore, through the lens of settler colonialism and decolonial environmental justice, this article examines patterns of environmental injustice in Mulanje and Thyolo, tracing their roots to colonial land policies and postindependence legal frameworks. In doing so, it aims to identify pathways toward environmental justice for marginalized communities still trapped by a global system sustained by colonial matrices of power.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Study area

See Figure 1.

FIG. 1.

Study areas. Source: https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/map/malawi-administrative-map.htm.

Methods

This study draws upon secondary sources, including academic literature, government reports, policy documents, and media articles, to identify patterns of environmental injustice and its socio-economic implications on local communities in the study area.

LITERATURE REVIEW

The origin of the land problem in Malawi

The roots of Malawi’s land crisis lie in the colonial era, when fertile lands were shared by European settlers, displacing indigenous populations to marginal lands. In 1891, Malawi was declared the British Central Africa Protectorate, largely due to the influence of Scottish missionaries who had arrived in 1875. This declaration was also intended to block Portuguese territorial ambitions in the region.^6,7 Sir Harry Johnston, the first Commissioner, envisioned economic growth through export-oriented agriculture. He supported European-led ventures and issued “Certificates of Claim” legitimizing European land ownership based on often dubious agreements with African chiefs.⁸ Additionally, he designated “waste and unused land” as crown land, redistributing it to European settlers. However, under customary law, chiefs held land in trust for their communities, making outright sale highly questionable.⁹ This ambiguity in land authority continues to generate disputes in Malawi and other African countries today and has had the greatest impact on Mulanje and Thyolo. The result is that Malawian families own less than 0.4 hectares of land, whereas tea and coffee estates cover 700–8000 hectares.¹⁰ In order to survive, landless and near-landless farmers are forced to sell their labor to estates. Tea and coffee corporations take advantage of landless households’ poverty by paying them wages that are frequently below the statutory minimum.

Settler colonialism, postcolonial theory, and environmental injustice in Mulanje and Thyolo

Though colonial administrations have formally ended, former colonial powers and corporations maintain control over significant tracts of land in Malawi, a classic manifestation of settler colonialism. As Whyte argues, settler colonialism disrupts mutual relationships between humans and nature, resulting in profound environmental and social harm.¹¹ Lee Maracle contends that violence against land is inseparable from violence against people.¹² This is echoed by Tuck and Yang, who describe land dispossession as a form of epistemological and ontological violence, meaning it is not only about taking land away from people; it is also about destroying how they understand the world and how they exist within it.¹³ Vanessa Watts emphasizes that indigenous perspectives on land are rooted in interdependence and relational responsibility, concepts undermined by settler colonial systems.¹⁴ Settler colonialism, therefore, fundamentally disrupts these interdependent systems, leading to structural and sustained injustice for local communities. Dana Powell’s conceptualization of “landscapes of power” argues that colonial and settler regimes produce enduring environmental structures that continue to shape resource access, governance, and ecological vulnerability long after formal colonial rule has ended.¹⁵ In Southern Malawi, colonial land alienation, estate agriculture, and fortress-style conservation have created landscapes in which indigenous communities bear disproportionate ecological burdens while remaining excluded from decision-making processes. This persistence of colonial environmental governance underscores how contemporary environmental degradation and climate vulnerability are inseparable from imperial histories of dispossession and control.

On the other hand, Postcolonial theory offers a complementary critique, highlighting the long-term impacts of colonization and the failures of postindependence regimes to meaningfully address historical injustices embraced during the colonial regimes. In Mulanje and Thyolo, the persistence of multinational-owned tea estates six decades after attaining self-rule exemplifies this unfortunate scenario. The local people continue to suffer from land scarcity, insecure tenure, food insecurity, and resource deprivation; all symptoms of entrenched environmental injustice.^16,17 This is a clear manifestation that post-independence land reforms failed to redistribute land or dismantle colonial tenure systems, thereby maintaining inequality.¹⁸ Instead of comprehensive reform, governments merely adapted colonial land frameworks, allowing elites and foreign investors to consolidate land ownership at the expense of local communities.

Decoloniality, decolonization, and environmental justice

Decoloniality offers a critical theoretical framework for interrogating decolonization efforts in Malawi and across Africa. Unlike the anti-colonialism that dominated the 20th century, which was largely elite-driven and mobilized peasants and workers primarily as foot soldiers, decoloniality demands a more profound dismantling of the colonial legacy.¹⁹ In Malawi, for instance, Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda and the Malawi Congress Party instituted a land tenure system after independence that effectively reproduced a ‘postcolonial neo-colonized’ state; officially independent but still operating heavily under the foreign influence. The inability of early postcolonial leaders to fully liberate African societies from entrenched colonial power structures has ignited scholarly and activist calls for decoloniality. As articulated by Gatsheni, decoloniality advocates for the dismantling of power relations and knowledge systems that continue to uphold racial, gender, and geopolitical hierarchies established or reinforced during colonialism.²⁰ Although several attempts have been made to decolonize land tenure systems, critics argue that these efforts lack the radical reforms necessary to address the historical injustices.²¹ In many cases, governments’ failure to adequately reform land tenure has led to the emergence of radical indigenous movements that resort to direct action in pursuit of land justice. Consequently, conflicts over land ownership, forced displacements, and contentious land acquisitions remain prevalent.^22,23,24 Despite systemic challenges, local communities in Malawi’s Thyolo and Mulanje districts have mounted resistance and advocacy efforts for environmental justice. Grassroots organizations, such as the People’s Land Organization (PLO), have been instrumental in demanding land redistribution and compensation for communities displaced by colonial-era tea plantations.²⁵ The PLO specifically campaigns for the right to cultivate land left fallow by tea estates, aiming to alleviate hunger and promote economic empowerment. As stated in its constitution, the PLO’s mission is “to assist in re-appropriating land taken by settlers/estates in order to end hunger and create wealth for all landless people.”²⁶

The PLO draws inspiration from findings of the 1997 Malawi Estate Land Utilization Survey conducted by the University of Malawi, which was later affirmed by the Malawi Presidential Commission of Enquiry on Land Policy Reform. The Commission concluded that land in Thyolo and Mulanje claimed under freehold title by colonial settlers was fraudulently acquired.²⁷ A landmark outcome of this advocacy was the reported decision by Lujeri Tea Estate to cede a significant portion of land to around 5,000 encroachers following a High Court-mediated agreement in June 2021.²⁸ While this was celebrated as a victory, the legal legitimacy of the agreement remains unclear due to the lack of publicly available documentation on the mediation process.

State-corporate crime and postcolonial environmental governance

As highlighted in the preceding chapters, environmental injustice disproportionately affects marginalized communities, manifesting through hunger, drought, floods, and environmental degradation. Despite the legitimacy of the local communities’ grievances, legal redress is often inaccessible. State-Corporate Crime theory provides a compelling framework for analyzing this impasse. Coined by Kramer and Michalowski and later refined by Aulette and Michalowski, State-Corporate Crime refers to socially injurious acts arising from the symbiotic relationship between state policies and corporate practices.²⁹ The theory emerged during investigations following the 1986 NASA Challenger disaster, which exposed the overlooked interdependence between government and corporate institutions. It recognizes the collaborative roles both sectors often play in facilitating harmful outcomes for the environment. Michalowski and Kramer categorize state-corporate crime as either state-initiated or state-facilitated.³⁰ The former involves corporate dishonesty carried out with government support or approval, while the latter reflects governmental failure to enforce regulations or prevent corporate harm. Viewed through this perspective, the environmental injustices faced by communities in Thyolo and Mulanje can be seen as both state-initiated and state-facilitated crimes. The situation is state-initiated in the sense that postindependence governments endorsed the colonialists’ continued control over land. It is also state-facilitated, as persistent inequalities in land access remain unaddressed, while land redistribution policies, contained in the Malawi’s Land Act of 2016, lie dormant and neglected.

Building upon the Malawi Land Act of 2016, the Malawi Land (Amendment) Act of 2022 was enacted as a corrective measure to strengthen the legal recognition of customary land. The act sought to formally classify customary land as private land held in trust for communities, thereby enhancing tenure security for indigenous populations.³¹ In principle, the amendment whistled a significant departure from colonial land doctrines that framed customary land as “waste” or “unused,” legitimizing its alienation to settlers and multinational estates.³² This could be a milestone in restoring historical injustices and align land governance with constitutional guarantees of equity, social justice, and sustainable development. However, the situation in Thyolo and Mulanje suggests that the transformative potential of the Malawi Land (Amendment) Act of 2022 has been severely constrained in practice. Studies indicate that weak institutional capacity at district and traditional authority levels, coupled with inadequate resourcing of land administration structures, has limited effective implementation.³³ Moreover, elite capture remains pervasive, as political actors and economically powerful estate owners continue to exert disproportionate influence over land governance processes, undermining the redistributive intent of the law.³⁴ This mirrors broader patterns across sub-Saharan Africa, where progressive land reforms are often neutralized through bureaucratic inertia and political resistance.³⁵

Consequently, the legal reforms in Malawi and sub-Saharan Africa operate largely at a symbolic level, offering legal recognition without material redistribution. From an environmental justice perspective, this implementation failure constitutes a form of state-facilitated environmental injustice. As theorized within state–corporate crime literature, harm arises not only from overt state action but also from deliberate inaction and regulatory withdrawal that enable corporate dominance over land and natural resources.³⁶ In Malawi, the persistence of colonial land inequalities despite progressive legislation demonstrates how postcolonial states reproduce coloniality through legal formalism, maintaining the appearance of reform while preserving entrenched power relations. Furthermore, the failure to operationalize the Malawi Land (Amendment) Act of 2022 has significant environmental implications. Land scarcity forces marginalized households to encroach on protected areas such as Mulanje Mountain, accelerating deforestation, biodiversity loss, and water insecurity. Women are disproportionately affected, as they rely heavily on access to land and natural resources for subsistence farming, water collection, and household energy needs. Thus, legislative inertia not only perpetuates colonial land injustices but also deepens intersectional vulnerabilities at the nexus of class, gender, and ecology.

In sum, although the Malawi Land (Amendment) Act of 2022 is a significant step forward in law, its limited implementation highlights the gap between what the law promises and the reality on the ground. Without political will, institutional strengthening, and a willingness to confront settler-capitalist land relations, land law reform risks becoming an instrument of symbolic compliance rather than a vehicle for decolonial environmental justice. As decolonial scholars caution, genuine transformation requires not merely new laws, but the dismantling of colonial matrices of power that continue to structure land governance in postcolonial Africa.³⁷

Gendered dimensions of environmental injustice in Thyolo and Mulanje

Environmental injustice in Thyolo and Mulanje is profoundly gendered, reflecting the intersection of colonial land dispossession, patriarchal social structures, and environmental degradation. Feminist political ecology scholars argue that environmental harm is never gender-neutral, as men and women occupy unequal social, economic, and political positions that shape both exposure to ecological risks and access to resources.³⁸ In rural Malawi, women bear primary responsibility for water collection, firewood gathering, food preparation, and subsistence agriculture, tasks that directly depend on access to land, forests, and water sources. As a result, environmental degradation disproportionately intensifies women’s labor burdens while simultaneously undermining household food security. Land scarcity in Thyolo and Mulanje, largely inherited from colonial-era estate land alienation, has exacerbated women’s vulnerability. Additionally, climate-related shocks such as droughts and floods disproportionately affect women smallholder farmers, who typically have fewer assets, limited access to credit, and weaker adaptive capacity compared to men.³⁹ These dynamics illustrate how environmental injustice operates through the intersection of gender, class, and land tenure insecurity.⁴⁰ Addressing environmental injustice in Thyolo and Mulanje, therefore, requires gender-responsive and decolonial land reform that goes beyond symbolic legal recognition.

DISCUSSION

The historical context of land disputes in Mulanje and Thyolo provides critical insight into the persistent struggle for land and environmental justice by African indigenous societies, despite the official end of colonial regimes. The case stands as a vivid testament to the enduring ghost of colonialism, resuscitated through the mechanisms of land control, environmental degradation, and structural marginalization. This study reveals that environmental injustice in Malawi is not merely an accidental rubble of colonial history but an actively and intentionally maintained system, embedded in both policy and practice through what decolonial theorists call coloniality. By applying a decolonial environmental justice lens, the findings expose how colonial land arrangements have evolved into postindependence political instruments that benefit elites while dispossessing the rural poor. This “imported land policy” is not limited to Mulanje and Thyolo; it is prevalent across all district councils, where vast tracts of land are often controlled by politicians or foreign nationals. In many instances, politicians illicitly sell public land with impunity. A notable example occurred in 2020 when the then Deputy Minister of Transport and Public Works, Charles Mchacha, sparked widespread controversy on social media for using offensive and vulgar language to insult a Nation newspaper journalist who was investigating the questionable sale of government land in Kanjedza Forest, Limbe.

In view of the foregoing, a painful reality must dawn on the surviving anti-colonialists and the new generation that independence did not dismantle the colonial infrastructure; it merely shifted its custodianship. The persistent control of fertile land by multinational corporations, particularly tea estates, underscores the argument that postcolonial Malawi operates under an “imported state,” where colonial power dynamics have been rebranded under national sovereignty. This continuity of dispossession represents not only a material injustice but also an epistemic and ontological one, as articulated by scholars like Tuck, Yang, and Watts.⁴¹ The indigenous relational worldview, where land is seen as a living entity, has been systematically undermined by settler colonial logic that commodifies nature and erases communal stewardship. Unfortunately, postcolonial regimes have not only embraced it but also refined it in their pursuit of political interests, interests that thrive on the poverty and ignorance of the electorate.

Additionally, the colonial state’s designation of “waste land” and subsequent alienation of customary land reveal a foundational legal distortion that still influences land tenure systems today. Despite legal instruments like the Malawi Land Act of 2016 and the Malawi Land (Amendment) Act of 2022, efforts to redress these historical injustices have been largely performative. The failure to implement redistributive justice demonstrates how legal and policy frameworks serve to reinforce, rather than resolve, systemic inequalities. Herein lies the state-facilitated nature of environmental injustice, where policy inertia and elite capture sabotage the very reforms meant to empower local communities.

From a settler colonialism perspective, the entrenched presence of European-owned estates in postindependence Malawi illustrates what Patrick Wolfe famously described: settler colonialism is a structure, not an event.⁴² Its logic is to eliminate indigenous claims to land and to replace them with capitalist, extractive economies designed to benefit a minority. In the case of Thyolo and Mulanje, this replacement takes the form of labor exploitation and environmental degradation. The people displaced from their ancestral lands are doubly burdened; they must endure barbaric labor conditions on those very lands and confront the ecological fallout of monoculture plantations that exhaust the soil and water resources. Large-scale tea plantations in Thyolo and Mulanje also exemplify a form of environmental racism, wherein indigenous communities bear the ecological costs of land degradation, water scarcity, and soil exhaustion, while deriving minimal economic benefit. Moreover, colonial and postcolonial land regimes have systematically erased indigenous ecological knowledge, replacing relational land stewardship with capitalist logics of extraction.⁴³ This epistemic erasure not only undermines sustainable land use but also deepens environmental injustice by delegitimizing local ways of knowing and governing nature. Recent scholarship by Powell advances a critical environmental justice framework that moves beyond conventional legal or policy-based analyses and centers vulnerability, sovereignty, and relational ecological knowledges.⁴⁴ Her work on renewable energy development as a potential reproduction of inequality challenges narratives that technological transition is inherently just, instead revealing how socio-ecological injustices are produced through extractive regimes and governance processes. Powell’s emphasis on community presence in the Anthropocene and the intertwined nature of infrastructure, health, and climate crises highlights the importance of a multi-scalar, decolonial approach to environmental justice, a lens that is directly applicable to Southern Malawi’s colonial land legacies, plantation ecologies, and contemporary climate governance.

Postcolonial theory further deepens this analysis by interrogating the complicity of postindependence leaders. Rather than challenging colonial legacies, early leaders like Kamuzu Banda institutionalized them, often masked in nationalist rhetoric. As Mbembe’s theory of necropolitics illuminates, the state’s selective protection of corporate interests over community welfare is not accidental; it is an exercise of power over life and death.⁴⁵ Environmental degradation, hunger, and landlessness become normalized conditions for the rural poor, while the state absolves itself of responsibility under the guise of economic development. This cements the notion that anti-colonialists were merely interested in the shift of power, not the overhaul of the whole governance system.

Grassroots resistance, as embodied by the PLO, represents a critical rupture in this otherwise hegemonic order.⁴⁶ The PLO’s work, including negotiations with Lujeri Tea Estate and their invocation of state-backed surveys, illustrates a form of decolonial praxis, a bottom-up challenge to the coloniality of power and knowledge. These actions embody what Walter Mignolo calls the “epistemic disobedience” necessary to reimagine justice beyond the confines of Western legal and political norms. However, the ambiguity surrounding the legal status of land deals with estate owners reflects the systemic barriers that still confront local movements. Without institutional backing and legislative clarity, such victories remain vulnerable and symbolic rather than transformative. Although the PLO has played a critical role in advancing land justice claims, its efforts cannot succeed in isolation from the state. Government participation is indispensable for legal enforcement, land redistribution, and institutional legitimacy. The Malawian state’s failure lies not in total absence, but in selective disengagement, allowing negotiations to occur without providing binding legal frameworks or enforcement mechanisms. This strategic inaction reinforces corporate dominance and exemplifies state-facilitated environmental injustice rather than administrative incapacity.

The application of State-Corporate Crime theory contextualizes the Malawi government’s failure to implement land reform and regulate environmental exploitation as more than bureaucratic inefficiency; it is a form of structural violence. State inaction and complicity allow corporations to act with impunity, producing environmental degradation and deepening social inequality. This dual culpability, both state-initiated and state-facilitated, is precisely why reform efforts have failed to shift power dynamics on the ground. Evidence from the Malawi Estate Land Utilization Survey of 1997 and the Malawi Presidential Commission of Enquiry on Land Policy Reform affirms that most estate lands in Thyolo and Mulanje were acquired through dubious means during the colonial era.⁴⁷ However, no administration has dared to reclaim or redistribute this land, fearing diplomatic fallout or economic retaliation. This reluctance reflects what Fanon described as the postcolonial bourgeoisie’s failure to achieve genuine decolonization, as the first wave of African leadership often prioritized political control over socio-economic transformation.⁴⁸ In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe’s radical land reforms, though controversial, represented one of the few cases of an African leader directly confronting the State-Corporate crime. The international backlash to Zimbabwe’s land reform may have served as a warning to other African nations, including Malawi, deterring similar actions. However, the state actors’ dormancy obviously stems from the benefits they get from the corporate society.

The findings of this study also demonstrate that environmental injustice in Thyolo and Mulanje cannot be understood solely as environmental degradation or land scarcity; rather, it is the outcome of intersecting social inequalities shaped by colonial legacies and postcolonial governance failures. Land dispossession in these districts disproportionately affects smallholder farmers, women, and landless households, whose socio-economic marginalization limits their capacity to adapt to environmental stressors. The concentration of fertile land in the hands of multinational tea estates reflects a class-based and historically racialized pattern of resource control that continues to structure vulnerability in the postcolonial era. Environmental degradation associated with monoculture plantations, such as soil exhaustion and water scarcity, reinforces existing inequalities rather than affecting all groups equally.⁴⁹

Gender further intensifies these intersecting injustices. Women in Thyolo and Mulanje experience environmental harm more acutely due to their socially assigned roles in water collection, fuelwood gathering, and subsistence farming. These responsibilities become increasingly burdensome as forests are depleted and water sources become scarce. At the same time, women’s exclusion from land governance institutions and estate negotiations limits their ability to influence decisions that directly affect their livelihoods. This gendered marginalization illustrates how environmental injustice operates through the intersection of land tenure insecurity, patriarchy, and poverty, producing differentiated impacts within already disadvantaged communities.

Ultimately, the findings of this study demand a reimagining of environmental justice that moves beyond technocratic policy fixes. Environmental justice in the Malawian context cannot be achieved without confronting the historical roots of dispossession, dismantling elite dominance over land, and centering indigenous knowledge and community participation in land governance. Decoloniality, as a framework and praxis, offers the most promising path forward. It insists on the transformation of not only institutions but also epistemologies—toward a future where land is not a commodity, but a commons; where communities are not subjects of policy, but agents of change.

CONCLUSION

The Thyolo and Mulanje land disputes are emblematic of the deep-rooted and multidimensional legacies of colonialism in Malawi. Unequal access to land, sustained environmental degradation, and persistent gender inequality continue to marginalize local populations. Addressing these injustices requires a transformative and decolonized approach to land governance, rooted in historical consciousness and structural reform. Although legal reforms such as the EMA 2017 present opportunities for change, they must be backed by political will and genuine commitment to dismantling colonial-era land ownership patterns. As other scholars suggest, formal restitution of idle estate land to peasant farmers could reduce poverty, but it is not a panacea. A sustainable resolution must include a comprehensive overhaul of land policy, informed by historical grievances, indigenous knowledge systems, and inclusive governance models. In addition, a shift toward sustainable land use practices is essential. Such practices not only restore ecological balance but also challenge the profit-driven land management systems imposed during the colonial era. Malawi’s future depends on the courage to confront its colonial past and reimagine land justice as a path to sustainable development and social equity.

AUTHORS’ CONTRIBUTIONS

M.Y.A.C. conceptualized the study, conducted the primary research, performed the data analysis, and led the writing of the article. D.P. provided critical guidance on the research design, contributed to the theoretical framing, and offered substantial revisions to the article. Both authors reviewed and approved the final version of the article for submission.