FROM INDIGENOUS STAPLE TO INSTITUTIONAL ORPHAN: THE IMPACT OF GOVERNMENT POLICIES ON SORGHUM DEVELOPMENT IN MALAWI

Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench) is among sub-Saharan Africa's most climate-resilient cereals, yet it remains institutionally neglected across the region's food security policies. This contradiction is starkest in Malawi's Lower Shire Valley, where erratic rainfall, extreme heat, and recurrent drought render maize agronomically unreliable, yet communities depend on sorghum precisely because it survives where maize fails. Successive government policies have nonetheless prioritised maize in subsidy allocation, extension delivery, market support, and seed investment. This study examines the impact of government policies on sorghum development across three dimensions, policy inclusion, policy alignment, and policy implementation, from the pre-colonial period through the Affordable Inputs Programme (AIP) and Malawi 2063 era. A cross-sectional mixed-methods design combined structured household surveys (n=421; Chikwawa, n=208; Nsanje, n=213) across six Extension Planning Areas, eight Focus Group Discussions, twenty Key Informant Interviews, and document review of colonial records, policy instruments, and institutional assessments (1891–2025). Quantitative data were analysed using chi-square tests; qualitative data were coded thematically. While nominal awareness of sorghum-related policy discussions was comparable to maize (52.7% vs. 55.3%, p=0.45), profound asymmetries emerged in training access (20.9% vs. 9.0%, p=0.001), programme consistency, political alignment, and strategy effectiveness (all p<0.001). Document review traced these to a historically constructed architecture of exclusion spanning six policy eras. Sorghum's marginalisation is not an agronomic or market outcome but a historically reproduced governance failure. AIP's nominal inclusion of sorghum constitutes aspiration without operational delivery; meaningful development requires structural reconfiguration of subsidy systems, extension mandates, seed infrastructure, and the entrenched narratives of maize exceptionalism. Keywords: sorghum; agricultural policy; food security; Lower Shire Valley; Malawi; neglected and underutilized crops; political economy