There are urgent reasons why Malawi is desperately luring Mr. Tyson to endorse her cannabis.

Tobacco,  which is Malawi’s chief money earner, is in peril.  Secondly, Malawi’s neighbors have galloped ahead of  her in luring foreign dollars to their cannabis economies. On 1 November 2021, Malawi’s agriculture ministry wrote a plea to Mike Tyson, groveling that the former boxer becomes the marketing face of Malawi’s cannabis.  “Despite (cannabis) perceived benefits, Malawi may not go it alone as the industry is complex and requires complex collaboration.

I would therefore like to appoint you, Mr. Mike Tyson, as Malawi’s Cannabis Brand Ambassador,” pleaded Mr. Lobin Clarke Lowe, who is Malawi’s agriculture minister. Mike Tyson, one of the boxing greats of all time, is a prominent cannabis advocate in the US. He declares that he’ll use weed “for life” and recently launched Tyson 2:0, his cannabis product line

However, it is unclear whether Mike Tyson has taken up Malawi’s generous offer. But Malawi is banking its hopes on cannabis because it has very few other options. One of the world’s poorest nations, Malawi has virtually no other minerals to dig and sell, unlike its resource-rich neighbors.

Its flagship income earner is tobacco. Alarmingly, Malawi is the most tobacco-dependent country in the world. 40% of its exports and 60% of its foreign currency earnings come from cultivating green leaf tobacco for shipping abroad. Yet tobacco in Malawi is a declining prospect.

It impoverishes farmers because large corporate cartels collude to fix prices such that farmers in Malawi earn just $79 per acre, unlike $351 elsewhere. “Tobacco in Malawi is seen as the hard labor crop that keeps farmers and the country busy but poor. Cannabis is a newly legalized crop and a massive chance for Malawi to earn better. Due to cannabis-heavy licensing rules, Malawi feels it can keep ruinous cartels at bay.

Hence the rather short overtures to likes of Mike Tyson to push Malawi’s cannabis in front of the world,” says Deogracias Kalima, an independent consultant who has written on green sustainability in Malawi for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Secondly, Malawi’s appeal to Mike Tyson to be the face of her cannabis is born out of the realization that neighboring countries have moved fast ahead of Malawi in cannabis legalization, cultivation, and export. F

or example, Lesotho, a country near Malawi, has become Africa’s cannabis star child – being the first country on the continent to legalize weed, launching Africa’s first contract-cultivation scheme, and grabbing Africa’s first medical cannabis export license to the EU.

“Malawi has panicked,” explains Kalima, the green consultant. “Lesotho nearby has a population that’s just a tenth of Malawi’s yet is rolling in cannabis cultivators, sophisticated machinery, and re-exporters fast from afar as Canada. Malawi is fearful that neighbor countries could gobble the cannabis market ahead of her – hence the swift appeal to Mike Tyson to headline Malawi’s cannabis.”