To get anywhere in forestry these days you have to play politics. Forestry can and should improve people’s livelihoods as well as looking after trees – and this means chaning the political environment for the better. Malawi’s National Forestry Programme seeks to address this challenge. It is different to many other national forest sector strategies and programmes which exist only as fat documents and list of projects for which donors cannot be found. It seeks to make the most of existing knowledge and do something with it, to get stake-holders of all kinds negotiating, to focus on a few agreed priority areas, to hit them hard and achieve major change. it’s a big challenge and results to date have been mixed. This study tells the story of Malawi’s NFP so far – it draws out lessons from the process, identifies challenges ahead and identifies a range of practical tactics for national forest programmes which may be useful in others countries.