ABSTRACT
This chapter examines trends in Malawian labour data across the twentieth century. In doing so, it provides a detailed account of the sources used to access labour and population data in Malawi, as well as an analysis of the quality of these sources. It details how data was originally captured and the rationale behind its collection in the colonial and post-colonial settings. Of the three territories examined in this book, Malawi has the poorest set of records and the ability to provide long-term data sets on industrial sectors and occupational structures is limited. The demographic history of Malawi has had some sustained academic research, which has helped elucidate population changes in the country since colonial intervention. Malawi has been, and remains, a very different economic system to either Zambia or Zimbabwe. With almost no mining activities to talk of, plus a much smaller commercial farming sector, Malawi remains economically driven by small scale/peasant farming. Urbanisation rates are the lowest in the region. However, Malawi is also the most densely populated country of the three. While Malawi is much smaller in size to Zimbabwe and Zambia, its population is roughly equivalent to these two, and has been so across the twentieth century. The chapter will outline the choices, opportunities and challenges the economically active populations of Malawi faced over the course of the twentieth century, and continuities and changes in the occupational structures of the Malawian economy from 1900 to 2000.
