Paper short abstract:

The paper argues that corporations deploy the 'power of presence' to influence national policies and practices for promoting sugarcane in Zambia. Drawing on two smallholder sugarcane projects, interpretations, divergences and incompatibilities in development objectives among actors are assessed

Paper long abstract:

This paper uses interview and community assessment data to discuss national policy and institutional frameworks for promoting sugarcane in Zambia and its implications on sustainable rural development. We focus on two sugarcane schemes under the multi-national corporation Illovo to highlight national motives and strategies for promoting sugarcane and consequences on patterns of rural poverty and livelihoods. The paper argues that policies and practices for promoting sugarcane have produced an uneven agribusiness-oriented industry structure. Corporations deploy the 'power of presence' to influence national-level policies and practices within market structures and in communities. National investment and trade policies and the Zambia National Sugar Adaption Strategy foster sugarcane expansion but the Strategic Environmental Assessment points to serious environmental implications. The government promotes smallholder integration for poverty reduction and livelihood security whilst corporations can limit their participation. Current schemes provide a conduit for industrial resource exploitation whilst transforming rural land and water use, producing local inequalities, poverty and livelihood insecurities. By unpacking diverse actors in the industry, we show divergences in the meaning, framing and interpretation of sustainability as well as incompatibilities in development objectives: agriculture development/transformation, social-economic and environmental development and sustainability. We emphasise the role of domestic economic and environmental institutions in defining, localising and mediating standards that would expand the range of issues corporations deal with whilst placing, at its centre, local community interests.