By Roi Fernandez Agudo, Programme Manager at ECLT Foundation
Data, research and reports are essential for understanding labour issues. They help us identify trends, estimate scale and assess whether progress is being made. Yet some aspects of complex challenges only become visible when speaking directly with the people most affected by them.
I recently travelled to Malawi to better understand the continued presence of tenancy labour arrangements in agricultural communities. Although the tenancy labour system was formally abolished in 2021, concerns remain about practices that continue to expose workers and their families to significant risks, including child labour and forced labour.
The visit involved meetings with government representatives, workers' and employers' organisations, development partners, private sector actors and, most importantly, workers and families living in farming communities. One of the things that struck me most was the gap between how the issue is often discussed and how it is experienced by those directly affected.
The tenancy labour system is generally associated with tobacco production, and before travelling to Malawi I expected most conversations to focus on tobacco farms. What I found was a more complex reality. Many of the farms we visited were highly diversified, with workers involved in the production of tobacco, maize, groundnuts, chia seeds and other crops.
This reinforces an important point. Labour vulnerabilities are rarely confined to a single commodity. They are often linked to broader economic conditions affecting workers and their families. Looking only at a crop can sometimes obscure the factors that create vulnerability in the first place. Those factors became increasingly visible throughout the visit.
Despite the risks and hardships associated with tenancy arrangements, there was no shortage of individuals willing to enter them. For many families, the alternatives appeared extremely limited. Chronic poverty, food insecurity, unemployment and lack of access to productive land had left many people searching for any opportunity to secure an income.
From the outside, it may be tempting to ask why people would agree to arrangements that are widely recognised as problematic. The reality is that many workers were not comparing good options with bad ones. They were making decisions within a context of severe economic hardship.
This was perhaps the most important lesson I took away from the mission. The continued existence of tenancy arrangements cannot be understood without understanding the conditions that drive people towards them. One conversation in particular has stayed with me since returning home.
I spoke with a young woman who was living on a farm with her husband and their two children. Her husband had been employed as a farm worker for the agricultural season. She was also working full time on the farm, although she had no formal contract and received no wage of her own.
What I remember most about the conversation was not her description of hardship. It was the way she spoke about the future. She wanted her children to continue their education and hoped to create greater stability for her family, yet she also described how difficult those aspirations felt to achieve.
Her husband had agreed to work for a wage of MWK 80,000, approximately USD 46, to be paid at the end of the harvest after nine months of work. When the harvest was completed, the landlord informed him that market prices had been poor and reduced the payment to MWK 35,000, approximately USD 20. She explained that the money would not be enough to cover household expenses and pay the examination fees required for her children's schooling.
The conversation was a reminder that discussions about labour systems are ultimately discussions about people. Behind every policy debate are families trying to make decisions about education, income, food and their future prospects. Another issue that emerged repeatedly during discussions with workers was the extent to which dependency can become embedded over time.
Many tenant workers had spent years living and working on farms while struggling to improve their circumstances. Some had received advance payments, others had taken loans, and many depended on access to housing or small plots of land provided by landlords. In practice, these arrangements can create situations in which workers feel unable to leave without exposing themselves and their families to even greater hardship. Debts become difficult to repay and cycles of dependency can persist for years.
Understanding these dynamics is important because they help explain why some tenancy arrangements may contain indicators of forced labour through debt bondage. They also demonstrate why addressing labour exploitation requires more than identifying individual cases. It requires understanding the systems that allow vulnerability to persist. Several discussions during the mission also highlighted a misconception that continues to influence some responses to the issue.
There is sometimes an assumption that if communities are informed that tenancy is prohibited, and if enforcement measures are strengthened, the problem will eventually disappear. Awareness raising and enforcement are important, but many of the workers we met were already aware of the challenges associated with tenancy arrangements. The more difficult question is what alternatives are available to families struggling to meet their most basic needs.
The visit reinforced that addressing tenancy requires looking beyond the existence of the practice itself and examining the conditions that sustain it. Poverty, economic insecurity and lack of viable livelihood opportunities remain central parts of the discussion. This is one of the reasons why spending time in communities matters. If programmes are to be designed using a participatory and human rights-based approach, the people affected by those programmes need to have a meaningful role in shaping them. Listening to workers and families helps us understand not only the challenges they face, but also the incentives, constraints and priorities that influence their decisions. Without that understanding, there is a risk that interventions respond to assumptions rather than realities.
If I had to summarise one lesson from this mission, it would be that addressing harmful labour practices is a shared responsibility. Governments and companies have a critical role to play in preventing human rights violations and addressing the conditions that enable them. Civil society organisations, trade unions, community groups and development partners also contribute essential perspectives, support services and accountability mechanisms.
The conversations I had in Malawi reinforced that sustainable change is unlikely to come from addressing symptoms alone. It will require continued investment in tackling the underlying drivers of poverty and economic insecurity that leave families with too few alternatives. Understanding those realities is where effective action begins.
