Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe

Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe share strong geographic, historic and economic ties. Their commonalities include being land locked facing high transportation costs and the colonial experience of governance by the British South Africa Company. Further, they have a history of integrated markets including large flows of labour migration and in the period 1953-63 they were joined in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. However, they also represent three distinct types of colonial economies: the peasant based (Malawi), the mineral dependent (Zambia) and the settler society (Zimbabwe). In this comparative study, we investigate the three territories’ economic interaction as well as their varieties in long-term income inequality trends.