January 4th, 2013

@ smallstepsadventuretours.com

Malawi is Africa’s largest tobacco growing country and the world’s largest burley tobacco growing country. This burley growing record is not achieved by large commercial farmers but subsistence farmers. It is no easy task to achieve. All work involved is manual from sowing the tobacco seeds on nurseries to transplanting, tendering, harvesting, processing and balling it for auctioning at the market.

Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), arrived in impoverished Malawi on Friday on a three-day official visit to “support the President and government” over its economic recovery programme.

“I am coming to see how we are partnering with the government and how better we can support economic reforms that are being implemented,” Largarde said on arrival.

She is due to hold private talks with President Joyce Banda later on Friday. She will also hold meetings with the private sector, the central bank and technocrats.

Malawi’s economy, powered by agriculture and aid inflows,…