There are three categories of results where the clash of mandates, norms and practices emerge most strongly: tobacco production and the Zambian economy, tobacco control and Zambians’ health, and the prospects for alternative crops to tobacco. Unless otherwise cited, statements of ‘fact’ by our interviewees reflect their perceptions; only in some instances did we utilize other sources to comment on these perceptions.
Tobacco production and the Zambian economy
Most of our informants’ references to mandates and norms concerned the economics of tobacco production in Zambia, which presently revolves largely around tobacco growing and processing of the leaf. As Zambia’s tobacco leaf production is largely for export, most participants considered tobacco to be particularly important in terms of foreign exchange revenues. Growing and processing the leaf is labour intensive, reportedly outpacing other crops’ labour inputs by a “factor of three to one” (TOB). Representatives from the tobacco industry have been particularly enthusiastic to promote unsubstantiated statistics on the tobacco sector’s employment profile. For example, one informant from a Zambian tobacco company estimated that the industry employs 16% of the population of the country (TOB), with numbers ranging from 120,000 farmers and farm family members (ZDA) to a commonly cited figure of 450,000 employed across the total industry (MOH) [
31]. These data generate the dominant narrative that tobacco production generates both profits and revenues, contributes to GDP, and is an important source of employment and rural livelihoods. In marked contrast, the government’s own statistics and related research we have conducted empirically challenge these claims, finding that the total number of individuals in tobacco farming households likely numbers around 54,000, there is no tobacco manufacturing within the country, and the number employed in leaf processing or trading is likely fewer than 5000 [
32]. Nonetheless, as our findings below indicate, the dominance of this narrative both drives, and is driven by, the mandates of the different institutions and sectors engaged in Zambian tobacco production.
In advancing a vision of Zambia becoming a ‘middle-income country’ by 2030, for example, the Ministry of Commerce, Trade and Industry references three industries that are fast growing due to increasing “domestic demand (food, beverages and tobacco)” (¶ 4.1.11), while explicitly acknowledging the importance of tobacco’s contribution to manufacturing value-add (¶ 4.1.26) [
33].
3 Considering that there is no tobacco manufacturing in the country, this “importance” can be best interpreted as aspirational. The Ministry’s overall mandate is “to facilitate and promote…a sustainable and globally competitive commercial, trade and industrial base” [
34], with tobacco falling within the “agro-processing” priority of the Ministry’s industrial development goal. This goal includes strategies to encourage and incentivize foreign or domestic investment in tobacco manufacturing, including cigarette production (IND) [
20]. The most recent example of this (October 2016) was a government request to Japan Tobacco International to set up such a cigarette manufacturing facility in Zambia’s Eastern Province, where much of the tobacco crop is grown [
35]. The Ministry’s pro-tobacco stance is further reflected in the normative emphasis its informants gave to tobacco’s role in employment – “we have a good number of peasant farmers who are tobacco producers, creating direct and indirect jobs” (IND) – and to “the country itself, in terms of exports” and foreign exchange earnings (IND).
Similar sentiments were expressed by our informant with the Tobacco Board of Zambia, a statutory body under the Ministry of Agriculture with the responsibility to “regulate and promote production, marketing and processing of the crop, as well as [its] export” (TBZ). Our informant gave particular emphasis to how “the nation is getting a lot of foreign exchange from tobacco,” adding that this is “because almost 100% of it is exported [with] revenue from tobacco estimated at 500 billion kwacha
4 per annum [US$96.2 million]” (TBZ). The Tobacco Board itself supports development of cigarette manufacturing in the country (whether for domestic consumption or export is not clear), the value addition of which its CEO recently argued “could…trickle down to…the tobacco growers” with “the potential to contribute to [overall] economic growth” [
31]. Our Board informant also underscored that “there are certain areas in Zambia where our people depend solely on tobacco” (TBZ), reinforcing the livelihood norm. This was a view somewhat challenged by our informant from the Tobacco Association of Zambia (representing tobacco farmers) who, speaking as a tobacco farmer, countered that “if your investment is purely tobacco, you won’t survive” (TAZ). He went on to describe how tobacco, even if the primary income generator, is usually just one of several income-earning crops grown by farmers.
Unsurprisingly, the argument of state reliance on tobacco revenue advanced by these two government institutions was also made by one of our tobacco company informants, who estimated total revenue from tobacco in 2013 at US$213 million. This is likely an overestimate, since data from the Food and Agriculture Organization place the value in 2012 at US$98 million [
1], similar to the figure provided by the Tobacco Board of Zambia, above. Our informant nonetheless contended that “when you list the crops in comparison [tobacco] is the highest” in terms of generating revenue (TOB). Such comments are indicative of how the perceived contribution of tobacco to Zambia’s economic development is an established norm for those engaged in the industry, albeit one based less on “the income point of view” than on the industry being “one of the greatest employers compared to others” (TOB). It also explains the inflated numbers used rather freely to actively sustain the dominant tobacco narrative, with its subsequent normative impact.
The employment argument was given central prominence by our informant with the Zambia Development Agency, a semi-autonomous institution with ties to the Commerce Ministry and with a charge “to foster economic growth and development by promoting trade and investment through [a] private sector-led economic development strategy” [
36]. Like the Tobacco Board informant, our Agency informant commented on the large number of farmers and their family members who relied upon tobacco production, and also noted the importance of tobacco “in reducing poverty levels in Zambia” (ZDA).
5 His reference to poverty reduction is curious. Many Zambian government ministries or institutions articulate a shared goal of promoting “socio-economic development” (COM), “sustainable economic and social progress” [
37] (COMESA), “socioeconomic development” [
38] (Health) and “sustainable agriculture, economic and social development” [
39] (National Farmers Union). Noticeably absent from the Agency’s mandate is any reference to this
social dimension of development, which seems to be clearly focused on the investment, trade and enterprise side of the development ledger [
36]. Our informant went on to describe tobacco as one of the country’s key industries which, as part of the agriculture sector, “enjoys certain incentives”, such as duty-free imports of inputs (e.g. machinery, chemicals) and tax reductions [
20].
The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) is an intergovernmental body promoting regional economic integration through trade and investment liberalization amongst its member countries. Its principle remit is “to promote regional value chains,” such that “a product produced in this country leaves and [then] comes back…so promoting those industrial loops and growth within the COMESA member states…that is what we are doing” (COM). Tobacco figures broadly within this agenda, but less as a regional value-chain strategy than as a national industrial strategy since many of its member countries are keen “not just [to] be exporting raw leaf but…to actually keep that leaf within the borders and then [to] manufacture the finished product for export or for consumption” (COM).
6 The goal of increasing job creation through industrialization and value-adding to traded goods is shared by the Foreign Affairs Ministry, which represents Zambia at the World Trade Organization; it is understandable, then, that our informant similarly saw tobacco production in a positive light, not just for the [tobacco growing] peasants but as well as the country itself in terms of exports” (FOR).
7
Although it is more common to find competing mandates and norms across different institutions, this can also occur within the same institutional sector. This was most apparent in our study with the Ministry of Agriculture which, as a health NGO informant pointed out, is responsible for promoting alternative crops to tobacco (as part of the Ministry’s stated mandate), but is also encouraging “farmers to grow more tobacco because it brings revenue to the Zambian Government” (NGO). Alongside its subsidiary Tobacco Board, however, the Agriculture Ministry actively promotes and financially supports tobacco farmers “through setting up of revolving funds, allocation of land to mostly peasant farmers and establishment of institutions such as the…Tobacco Training School” [
31]. Such promotions are considered indirect supports to tobacco farming. As one of our Agriculture informants explained:
[We] do not get involved with smallholder farmers in terms of cash crops they produce if these value chains have been long standing. The value chains are so well established... tobacco happens to be one of these. In terms of [direct] interventions… we feel the private sector is taking care of that (AGRI).
This explanation derives from the Ministry’s encouragement of “public-private partnerships” with certain “agriculture companies which come under ‘agro’ schemes whereby they focus on one crop” (AGRI). Tobacco is one such crop, where support for inputs (e.g. seeds, fertilizers, herbicides) is frequently provided by tobacco companies in contractual arrangements made with individual farmers (so-called ‘contract farmers’). Unlike ‘independent farmers’, contract farmers are spared the upfront costs of beginning each season and are guaranteed a buyer for their crop (although not a price) when the season ends, in a supply management system that offers some security to tobacco farmers but also places them under the monopsonistic financial control of tobacco leaf companies and, ultimately, tobacco transnational companies. More recently, however, the CEO of the Ministry’s subsidiary Tobacco Board has urged the government to extend its Farmer Input Support Programme to tobacco growers [
31].
8
The boundary between tobacco and non-tobacco farm support is somewhat blurred, with one of our informants describing geographically situated “camps” where Ministry staff “bring new technology, promote irrigation and mechanization”. They are required to assist “any farmer within that location” (tobacco-growing or otherwise) as part of the Ministry’s goal “to improve productivity, because productivity is a major problem in our country” (AGRI). This support can extend to tobacco research (although informants with the Zambia Agriculture Research Institute explained that this is no longer the case), but more commonly to intervening around “issues of marketing and pricing, because along the way we have had situations where we felt the producers were being, you know, exploited or blacklisted by the buyers” (AGRI). Even as one of the Agriculture Ministry’s goals is to promote crop diversification, a senior Ministry official as recently as 2016 spoke out against any attempts to ban tobacco production while claiming that tobacco contributed “3% to the Gross Domestic Product” [
40](REF), a figure an order of magnitude higher than World Bank and FAO estimates, 0.4% of GDP [
1]. The official also repeated the normative refrain that any loss in tobacco production or trade would “worsen poverty in rural communities which depend entirely on tobacco production” and called for “dialogue between the tobacco sector and health authorities on the country’s adoption of the tobacco control treaty” [
40].
9
Tobacco control and Zambian health
Although our informants spoke most extensively on tobacco’s economic importance, the issue of tobacco control and health received considerable attention. The Ministry of Health was identified by several informants as the “lead Ministry” for tobacco control. “Strengthening enforcement of legislation on tobacco use” is identified as a key intervention for the Ministry [
38] (p.20), albeit one that has yet to be implemented; while tobacco use is seen rather singularly as a “lifestyle” factor [
38] (p.18). There is no reference to the FCTC, or to tobacco farming or production, in the Ministry’s 2011–2015 strategic plan, although the ministry is scheduled to introduce a new plan sometime in 2017. One of our health informants did state that the Ministry’s policy directorate was requested to develop “legislation following [Zambia’s ratification of the] WHO FCTC”. Our informant with the WHO country office also noted that it is the Health Ministry’s responsibility to implement “procedures and [advance] the process of accelerating the enactment of the [FCTC] law” (WHO). The WHO Country Office in Zambia, in turn, is mandated to perform an advisory function, “providing financial and technical support to government, to assist government to domesticate the FCTC, so they can implement the supply and demand reduction measures which are in the [Convention] by specifically ensuring that they come up with a domestic law which captures the major supply and demand measures which they are obliged to implement” (WHO). This advisory role includes low-key advocacy efforts, such as writing to ministers or convening regional meetings to prod “those countries that have yet to implement these laws” (WHO).
Our Health Ministry informants also spoke of friction among the different Ministries and their competing mandates. The Ministry had attempted to involve the Ministry of Finance in a commitment to increase taxes related to tobacco products (one of the reduction strategies advanced by the FCTC), but Finance did not engage. Further attempts were made to develop inter-ministerial collaboration among the Commerce and Agriculture Ministries, Zambia’s Bureau of Standards, and the Zambia Revenue Authority (MOH), but continually faced challenges because the mandates and priorities of these other institutions conflicted with those of Health. Our informants further described how the Ministry had received comments on the Australia Plain Packaging Proposal from Foreign Affairs, which argued that provisions in the proposal may contradict other laws in Zambia (e.g. the Zambia Competition and Consumer Protection Act). This Act states that the laws put in place in Zambia should not interfere with the running of businesses. If the plain packaging law were to pass, it would mean consumers would be disadvantaged as they wanted to know the brand available. Foreign Affairs further advanced that the World Trade Organization (WTO) would not allow Health to enact laws that interfered with trade (MOH), a statement which is not actually true except under certain conditions.
These mandate and normative conflicts with tobacco control goals, however, were most pronounced with Commerce and Agriculture:
Our line Ministry, we have had challenges with Commerce, and their concern is that we are getting money out of tobacco and it’s assisting the government…so [while] we are worried about the health of the people, our friends the agronomists [in Agriculture] are worried about the crop and the industry [Commerce] is worried about business. It’s a triangle (laughs) (MOH).
The norm from within the Ministry was that health staff were unavoidably trapped within this triangle, since “the problem is because we know that just as much as we want our people to be healthy, we also need money to procure drugs, and where is this money coming from?” (MOH) the answer to the rhetorical question being from government revenues relying, in part, on tobacco. Health NGOs in distinct contrast were more dismissive of this concern, stating bluntly that “the government is spending more on treatment [for tobacco diseases] than the revenue they are getting from…tobacco” (NGO).
To treat a cancer patient it takes a lot of money, it’s expensive. So whatever revenue the Zambian government is getting…from the tobacco sales and the tobacco industry, it goes to Ministry of Health to treat the cancer patients (NGO).
Another informant from the Health Ministry seemed to accept this broad brush assessment, noting that “we have these [employment and revenue] challenges but we should also look at the negative impact [tobacco] has on the human health and…always say that even if that money is made, it still ends up in procuring medicines for people [suffering tobacco diseases] or rehabilitating them or whatever” (MOH). These statements invert the dominant pro-tobacco norm (that it creates a positive economic externality) by contending that it actually risks being an economic drain, an argument given broad support by the World Bank report “Curbing the Epidemic” in 1999 [
41]. While such an assertion is reasonable given the mandate of the Health Ministry (and other health NGOs) to improve and protect health, it rests on demonstrating that smoking rates and tobacco-related diseases are sufficiently prevalent in Zambia that they offset tobacco’s economic benefits.
10
These pro-tobacco economic arguments were ubiquitous, reflected long-standing arguments advanced by tobacco transnational companies, and led many informants to rationalize the continued or expanded production of a good that many openly acknowledged was known to cause health problems. Several informants reconciled this normative dissonance by claiming that “It’s not the Zambian who consumes the tobacco” (AGRI), citing the fact that most of Zambia’s tobacco is exported, primarily to China. A tobacco company informant similarly stated that, because “Zambians don’t smoke” the government shouldn’t try to convince to stop growing tobacco by arguing that “we lose money to health costs due to consumption” (TOB). One informant further linked his assumption of low smoking rates of Zambians with the country’s ambivalence towards the FCTC and new tobacco control measures:
I think in Zambia we don’t have a very big tobacco problem in terms of the number of people that smoke... if Zambians are not heavily smoking they are not really interested in the purpose and implementation of the FCTC (FOR).
While most informants indicated domestic consumption of cigarettes to be low, statistics show otherwise, with 24% of Zambian males reported to smoke in 2013 (WHO, 2016).
An informant involved in the trade side of the Foreign Affairs emphasized the importance of striking “a balance between the fiscal issues [the foreign exchange tobacco trade generates] as well as the health issues” (FOR). Even when recognizing that “tobacco is harmful,” there is a need to “balance that [with] the need to get to a certain level of economic development” (COMESA); that “much as the [FCTC] proposal…with health issues might make sense, we also need to ensure that we do not disadvantage the farmers who are involved in production of tobacco” (TRADE). Other informants were more explicit:
[The FCTC] was a threat to tobacco producing countries…and that regulation might affect tobacco-producing countries in terms of revenue…All member states were in agreement…that we should…not entertain this kind of regulation, which threatens the economies of SADC [Southern African Development Community] and tobacco production (FOR).
The strategy of creating country coalitions in support of rural tobacco livelihoods and against tobacco control measures, which derives more from norms than from institutional mandates, has been reported on in other findings from our research study [
20,
42]. Our COMESA informant similarly noted how, a year before we began our study, British American Tobacco lobbied COMESA member countries to issue a joint position opposing the FCTC because it risked “reducing consumption of tobacco” negatively impacting the demand for tobacco leaf (COM). Tobacco company arguments were always on tobacco’s “contribution to GDP…that is the foundation” (COM). In a more normative vein, our informant thought that Zambia needed first to grow its economy before tackling tobacco’s health issues, “because it seems the more prosperous countries are [the ones] dealing with tobacco” (COM). This appeared to be shared by one of our Foreign Affairs informants who argued that, for the moment at least, “engaging in treatment [to reduce] tobacco use” may have to be considered “a luxury” (FOR). For both informants, GDP growth appears to be more important than either supply side measures, or even domestic tobacco use reduction.
Others were less concerned with rationalizing the health/tobacco nexus, and simply retreated to their institutional mandate. When two of our informants from Commerce were asked about the direct contradiction in their tobacco promotion goals with those of the Ministry of Health, they simply restated that their role was “to promote industrial development” (including tobacco manufacturing), and that any health concerns related to tobacco were the responsibility of the Health Ministry. They also invoked the ‘personal choice’ norm, that smoking was a strictly private affair outside of the realm of the state (IND), an argument made by several other informants who talked about education rather than regulation to curb Zambian smoking rates. In response to a question about the FCTC’s suite of advertising and sponsorship bans, warning labels and taxation measures, our Tobacco Association informant countered, “Let me again mention that [these] are punitive measures [whereas] I believe in education, through talking to people, not glorifying [smoking]” (TAZ). He also raised the ‘smoker’s rights’ argument advanced by tobacco transnationals, stating that “if you are driving and you want to light a cigarette, then light it. It is my choice to get out if I want to [to avoid you smoke]” (TAZ).
It was the ‘balance’ norm, however, that predominated amongst informants in sectors engaged in the tobacco industry or its promotion. The strength of this same norm was further evident in how it was also invoked by those with only peripheral engagement with tobacco production, or charged with implementing tobacco control measures. One of our health informants, for example, accepted completely the tobacco employment and revenue argument:
We have the employment offered by the industry. We have the revenue from the industry and [we] cannot just…throw it away, because the government gets revenue from the same tobacco (MOH).
While health informants were well versed in the economic arguments for tobacco, tobacco informants were less well versed in the health concerns. Despite a health informant stating that, because the FCTC was signed by Zambia’s President, “all of us as members of the government are supposed to listen to it” (MOH), several informants from other Ministries claimed they had never heard of the Convention, or were unaware of its requirements, which include proscriptions on governments’ support for or encouragement of tobacco production.
11 One of our Foreign Affairs informants was under the mistaken impression that Zambia was still negotiating ratification of the FCTC when in fact the country had ratified the Convention 5 years earlier, and that it was Foreign Affairs that led the FCTC negotiations. He also didn’t perceive any conflicts between the FCTC and the mandates of other Ministries, arguing that if they were the lead (or ‘line’) Ministry (in the case of the FCTC, Health) would convene meetings with other affected Ministries (including his own) to iron them out:
But when an issue has little controversy in terms of the running … it’s easy to let the line ministry run with it. In my understanding we are not having [controversial issues] at the moment. So I assume the implementation of the Convention is going smoothly (FOR).
Others were dismissive of the Convention, regarding it as the sole prerogative of the Health Ministry, as one informant from Agriculture expressed:
They [health] must have signed those [FCTC] protocols on behalf of maybe the country (laughs)…In the meantime we are the people who are actually involved in the production and… you guys, you sign for this, you don’t even consult us (AGRI).
One of our tobacco informants was blunter, stating that the leaf transnational for which he worked:
…is not opposed to the FCTC…but to the way tobacco is looked at. There is nothing good in it [the FCTC] about [tobacco] but there is good things about tobacco when you look at it on the economic side. [We] think the FCTC is too extreme (TOB).
Alternatives to tobacco production
One of the supply-side tobacco control strategies advanced in the FCTC, and another theme probed in our study, is to promote alternative livelihoods for tobacco farmers. An Agriculture informant noted that crop diversification “is part of our mandate, yes, we are now talking about diversification…we have a fully-fledged department, which is there just to assist smallholder farmers” (AGRI). The diversification effort, however, is not specific to tobacco but is part of a broader Ministry mandate to “increase the value and growth rate of crop exports” with an emphasis on “domestic and international markets” regardless of crop [
43] (p.6). Tobacco is a concern only insofar as there is worry that global and domestic consumption might start to decline “due to health issues” [
43] (p.17). The Zambia Development Agency also takes a generic approach to diversification, “not saying that farmers who are growing tobacco [should] grow other products, what we are doing is looking at other products that we encourage [all] farmers to grow” (ZDA).
Working on tobacco alternatives forms part of the Health Ministry’s work, but there is the pervasive “challenge in that we have to convince the industry and the government that whatever we do [we] will have to find a system that is going to replace what we have now as a source of revenue” (MOH).
The farmers are saying, if you find a crop that is as marketable or ready as an alternative crop that will…give them income they will definitely shift. So the challenge we have is to find the crop that is as marketable, or even more marketable, than tobacco (MOH).
This challenge is inherently (or should be) “whole-of-government,” as the WHO informant acknowledged: “These are important economic policies where you need multi-sectorial approaches because the Ministry of Health alone cannot manage to support these farmers, help them to go into alternative crops” (WHO), a key Ministry partner in this being Agriculture. However, to the contrary, there is a more prominent institutional initiative in place to foster processing and manufacturing of agricultural crops through investment incentives. This initiative treats tobacco as any other crop and our findings have pointed out that this has generated interest in tobacco processing and manufacturing, with the potential to lead to greater demand for tobacco growing within the country [
20].
Our Agriculture informant acknowledged that the government “should now be seen to discourage tobacco growing and maybe assist farmers growing tobacco to diversify to crops which are not as harmful” but added that “the alternatives are not forthcoming” (AGRI). As other Agricultural informants expressed, “the [tobacco] sector feels they need to be given a bit more time to come up with an exit strategy” (AGRI). These perceptions reflect another tobacco norm that, as our informant with the Tobacco Alliance, expressed: “Tobacco will pay for the development, and then that eventually gives the farmer the ability to decide to diversify into other crops” (TAZ). While all informants emphasized the importance of working with tobacco farmers themselves around the identification of crop alternatives, those representing the industry were more emphatic that “where there are issues of finding alternative crops for tobacco…this is supposed to be voluntary, the farmers themselves they will see that this crop is better than tobacco. It’s not something that you can force the farmers to do” (TBZ).
The government-funded Zambia Agriculture Research Institute, perhaps reflecting its mandate to identify alternative crops to tobacco, gives a somewhat optimistic spin to that possibility: “Crops like soya beans, if properly managed and grown, could compete favourably with tobacco” (ZARI). Although hedging this claim somewhat, “I can’t say with confidence that’s the case, I think those are some of the studies we need to carry out to be certain” the ZARI informant nonetheless noted that “soya beans is a very good alternative to tobacco…and for us, we look at the entire value chain” (ZARI). Reference was made to a new soya processing plant
12 that would cater to small-scale farmers (previously a barrier for entering the soya market) and that, like tobacco processing facilities, would pay immediate cash: “You go in with soya beans, you walk out with cash” (ZARI). The absence of GMO soya would also ensure a market niche for Zambian soya exports, with the ZARI informants commenting that, with tobacco production on a decline, “the increase in soya production has been dramatic.” The challenge is “to change the crop culture, especially in those areas where farmers have been growing tobacco…to demonstrate [that soya] is a good alternative crop” (ZARI).