“Risking Death for Survival: Peasant Responses to Hunger and Hiv/Aids in Malawi”
SHEH 3017: SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
3rd REFLECTION PAPER ON AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ARTICLE
Title: “Risking Death for Survival: Peasant Responses to Hunger and HIV/AIDS in Malawi”
Authors: Deborah Fahy Bryceson and Jodie Fonseca
PREPARED BY: NAJMUL FAJRI USMAN (SEH110704)
Malawi has been known to be among the top eight countries with the highest widespread level of HIV/AIDS in the world. It has also experienced three-year-long food crisis dating back to 2001. Authors of this paper attempted to explore the relationship between those two life-threatening issues. Published literature has documented that the spread of AIDS in Africa could be associated with political instability and geographical motility in general. It was also revealed that some particular economic categories are more likely related to HIV/AIDS infection than others. For example, miners, youth, and peasant farmers are more vulnerable to HIV infection compared with sexual workers because the latter in sexual profession uses condoms more readily than the former. For Malawian farmers, farming is a major source to supply foods not only for their family subsistence but also for market sales. Women and older men are more responsible for smallholder household production as the men are given priority by the Banda’s government to take care of tea and tobacco plantation. Plantation wage labour in Malawi has been decreased due to the changing political and economic situation in Southern Africa. Moreover, most Malawian villages are shown to be very disadvantageous in that they are led by uneducated male elders who are not even elected democratically. Particularly when a famine hit, they became in short of investment, resulting in poor local agricultural, health and education service provisions. Peasant farmers in Malawi have faced a number of major famines throughout the 20th century. The government and some external agencies have tried to assist them by distributing high-yield maize seeds,
3rd REFLECTION PAPER ON AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ARTICLE
Title: “Risking Death for Survival: Peasant Responses to Hunger and HIV/AIDS in Malawi”
Authors: Deborah Fahy Bryceson and Jodie Fonseca
PREPARED BY: NAJMUL FAJRI USMAN (SEH110704)
Malawi has been known to be among the top eight countries with the highest widespread level of HIV/AIDS in the world. It has also experienced three-year-long food crisis dating back to 2001. Authors of this paper attempted to explore the relationship between those two life-threatening issues. Published literature has documented that the spread of AIDS in Africa could be associated with political instability and geographical motility in general. It was also revealed that some particular economic categories are more likely related to HIV/AIDS infection than others. For example, miners, youth, and peasant farmers are more vulnerable to HIV infection compared with sexual workers because the latter in sexual profession uses condoms more readily than the former. For Malawian farmers, farming is a major source to supply foods not only for their family subsistence but also for market sales. Women and older men are more responsible for smallholder household production as the men are given priority by the Banda’s government to take care of tea and tobacco plantation. Plantation wage labour in Malawi has been decreased due to the changing political and economic situation in Southern Africa. Moreover, most Malawian villages are shown to be very disadvantageous in that they are led by uneducated male elders who are not even elected democratically. Particularly when a famine hit, they became in short of investment, resulting in poor local agricultural, health and education service provisions. Peasant farmers in Malawi have faced a number of major famines throughout the 20th century. The government and some external agencies have tried to assist them by distributing high-yield maize seeds,