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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Repositioning the Shire Valley Project: a retrospective (part 1)
Author:Welsh, Marc
Year:2013
Periodical:The Society of Malawi Journal
Volume:66
Issue:2
Pages:51-60
Language:English
Geographic term:Malawi
Subjects:hydroelectricity
waterways
development projects
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/23611972
Abstract:The Shire Valley Project (SVP) was an integrated macro-development programme that aimed to regulate the level of Lake Malawi, to capture the hydro-electric potential of the Shire River and to open up and irrigate a vast tract of the Lower Shire Valley. It has had an enormous impact on the landscape, livelihoods, people and economy of Malawi. In this paper, the author explores how a State rationale for regulating nature, in the form of the SVP, emerged in the 1940s as an ongoing response to a dynamic hydrological system. The main purpose of the paper is to suggest a reconsideration of the Shire Valley Project as a centre-piece of colonial and post-colonial government planning for the development of Nyasaland/Malawi. Implemented piecemeal, the SVP was partially successful in achieving sometimes incompatible objectives, yet the governmental rationale of seeking to regulate the hydrology of Malawi to make waters and land productive in a globalizing economic system persists to the modern period. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]
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