The Legal Protection of New Plant Varieties in Malawi: Challenges and Solutions For Rural Women Farmers

The emerging, developing, interesting and academically fertile area in IP and developing countries is the
area of New Plant Varieties for its impact on food security and socio-economic developing of the countries.
This paper engages into the formal intellectual property law and its impact or lack thereof on Plant breeders
and rural women farmers. The focus of the paper is whether the formal law mechanisms could be utilized to
emancipate the rural women farmers. This implicates on the rural women farmers in that it lenders them
food insecure and with possibility of becoming socially destitute. This is so because a food is a symbolic
status with a potential of eradicating the economic challenges faced by rural women farmers. The paper
holds that utilising Feminist Marxist legal theory and Ubuntu conceptualisation is the formal law is a good
means of protecting new plant varieties in Malawi for the benefit of rural women farmers.