Do the Chinese bring chitukuko?
Thomas McNamara
University of Melbourne
Rural Malawians understand development, or chitokuku, primarily in terms of gifts and projects that are brought into a community. This, combined with factors including that visibility of NGOs and the nation’s politicisation of its aid dependence, have led to local development narratives that do not incorporate China’s involvement in Malawi. This paper, based upon eleven months fieldwork in the north of the country, will explore how rural Malawians conceptualise Chinese influence within their region. It will examine how Chinese goods, in particular mobile phones and electronic devices, are compared to their “western” equivalent; how villagers discuss those who obtain urban employment with Chinese businessmen; and will recount the direct gifting of bicycles by the Chinese state department to the area’s MP, who then distributed them to supporters in the village. It will examine how and why these aspects of Malawian life were not understood as development. It will unpack the implications of the disjuncture between Malawian and Chinese development narratives and elucidate that this represents a significant challenge for relationships between Chinese developers and rural Africans.
