Malawi soya exhibits strong export potential and could help Malawi’s economy address an acute balance of payments challenge, fiscal deficits, and pervasive rural poverty. However, farmers and traders attempting to export soya face a complicated set of procedures to carry out a formal export. In this study, we attempt to bring clarity to the export process and then lay the groundwork for trade policy reform to facilitate soya exports. First, we use Process Net-Map to track the steps required to export soya, quantify and time and cost requirements for each step of the process, and calculate the discretion with which official rules and regulations related to the export process are applied to exporters. We then re-employ Net-Map to study the landscape for trade policy reform to determine the policy network characteristics required for successful policy reform.