Abstract

The socio-cultural factors influencing oil palm production among indigenous rural farmers in Karonga district, Malawi, were examined in this study. Indigenous oil palm farmers were contacted using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, including focus groups, in-depth interviews, and questionnaires, to gather triangulated data for a sequential explanatory design. Quantitative data was analyzed using the Mann–Whitney U test, chi-square, and frequency measures. To analyze the qualitative data, interpretive phenomenological analysis was employed. In this study, four focus groups were formed, eight key informants, and a sample size of 477 houses from a study population of 680 households. According to 96.4 percent of the respondents, men and women engage equally in decision-making, and 96.9 percent acknowledged that there was division of labor, indicating that there were significant intra-household gender roles that influence labor dynamics, decision-making, and access to land. Men hold more acres of land than women, although 77.6 percent of the respondents reported that both men and women can access land. This is a reflection of traditional gender dynamics when it comes to land inheritance patterns, as shown by the Mann–Whitney U test, with mean ranks of 259.14 for males and 201.61 for females, and a Mann–Whitney U value of 19,641.500, with a p-value of 0.001. The study proposed that specific interventions be implemented to support women’s equitable cultural land rights and resource control. These interventions include community sensitization campaigns, capacity-building programs, and customary land policy modifications to guarantee equal inheritance rights.