Today, Malawian tobacco is found in blends of nearly every cigarette smoked in industrialized nations including the popular and ubiquitous Camel and Marlboro brands.
[4] Malawi began exporting tobacco in 1893, just two years after the British set up a colonial government in the landlocked territory known then as Nyasaland.
[5] ADMARC gave priority to a policy of the development of estates growing Burley tobacco, many controlled by Banda and senior officials and politicians.
In 1972, the government enacted the Special Crops Act that limited the production of tobacco, tea, and sugarcane to estate owners with no exceptions for small landholders.
[9] Starting in 1989, labor and human rights activists began calling attention to the use of children in Malawian tobacco production.
However, violations still occur in the country due to the lack of infrastructure and ability to enforce these regulations in the rural areas.
In 2002, Malawi experienced heavy flooding, causing President Bakili Muluzi to declare a state of national emergency.
Since a large amount of Malawi's agricultural sector is devoted to producing tobacco, the country experienced extreme food shortages resulting in famine and starvation.
[10] However, the quality improvement was not sustained into the second decade of the century, as the costs of tobacco production went up after the government reduced then ended subsidies for fertilizer.
[14] As the world demand for tobacco has decreased in the current decade, reducing producer and government revenues, the national economy has suffered since 2012.
An estimated 78,000 children work on tobacco estates, often for long hours, low pay, and without protective clothing.
For children, the symptoms of nicotine poisoning, severe headaches, abdominal pain, muscle weakness, coughing and breathlessness are more pronounced because of their size.
Compared to other industries, tobacco has one of the more developed infrastructures in Malawi with established market systems, research, and processing companies.
[23] As of 2014, newly elected President Peter Mutharika was supporting diversification of Malawi's agriculture into other crops besides tobacco.
While Malawi has one of the lowest incidences of smoking worldwide, annual cigarette consumption has increased steadily since the 1970s and more rapidly since the 1990s.
[23] Although today cigarette packages may be labelled with warnings in both English and Chichewa (Kusuta kukhoza kuwononga Moyo) which in English translates to "Smoking is hazardous to health", these warnings are not mandatory, and (as of 2019) there are no legal restrictions on smoking in public places or on public transport and no restrictions on tobacco advertising or sponsorship.
Internationally recognised Sustainable Development Goals advocate reducing a country's economic dependence on tobacco, reducing the number of families trapped in cycles of poverty and improving food security by supporting alternative sustainable livelihoods for tobacco growers.
However, without external assistance, Malawi has only a limited capacity to develop economically effective alternatives to tobacco production.
A start has been made, as the Malawi Development report for 2011–2016 stated: "... the objective will be to increase the country’s market share in traditional agricultural products such as sugar, cotton, coffee and tea as well as diversifying away from tobacco into wheat, cassava, macadamia nuts, fruits, pulses and vegetable commodities among others", although this required significant donor assistance.