OUR PROJECTS

1. Agricultural Marketing and Information System for Malawi Agriculture Commodity Exchange Development.

The project is a five year project guaranteed by the University of Malawi Bunda College. It is a five year project funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. It is being implemented within the overall project framework of Initiative for Development and Equity in African Agriculture (IDEAA) project. The project became active on 1 September 2004.

The overall objective of the project is to make markets work better for the resource poor farmers, which would then lead to poverty reduction and economic growth since agriculture is the engine of economic growth in Malawi.  The project is innovative in that it has built in cost recovery mechanisms for sustainability beyond donor funding in year five.

Malawi’s economy depends on agriculture. It accounts for about 36% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), employs 85% of the population, and is the most important source of income accounting for over 63% of total income for the rural poor. Malawi’s agriculture sector is dualistic in nature composed of estate and smallholder sector. The majority of the smallholders fall within the resource poor households contributing over 75% of agriculture GDP. The performance of the smallholder sector is therefore crucial to the performance of the overall agriculture sector.

Between 1981 and 1994, Malawi implemented several structural adjustment reforms, which aimed at liberalizing the economy. The objectives of the reforms were to let the market forces play a significant role in the allocation of resources and reduce government role. It was therefore perceived that since government role will be reduced, the markets will become more efficient; and farmers would get good prices for their inputs and output products. This has however not been the case. There are several factors, which have contributed to the market failures one of which is lack of, timely and reliable market information hence the development of this project called Agricultural Marketing and Information System for Malawi (MIS-Malawi).

The project is a public/private sector lead initiative because of the high levels of poverty hence not viable to be implemented on a commercial basis; and it is also however difficult to guarantee its sustainability if implemented as a public good because of the failures of past initiatives once donor funding dries up because of lack of cost recovery mechanism. This MIS-Malawi is therefore being implemented as a public/private sector initiative to ensure that the resource poor farmers get reached and the project is sustainable beyond donor funding.

The project is commodity neutral covering a number of important agricultural commodities for economies of scale but also because the same farmers and traders deal with many agricultural crops and commodities; and also because of the diversity of agriculture commodities by region. The project has set up three agriculture market information centers in Limbe, Lilongwe, and Mzuzu. Each of these sites also once a week service two rural markets called market information points as follows: Limbe serves Bvumbwe and, Lunzu, Lilongwe serves Mitundu and Chimbiya, Mzuzu serves Jenda and Mpamba.

The project has various components which involve a combination of onsite and online elements harnessing the power of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) as a means of providing relevant and timely marketing information and intelligence to farmers and other market intermediaries in commodity value chains. The major components of the project are a central Hub, five market information centers (MICs), Short Messages Service (SMS), and Website.

The overall goal of the project is to make markets work better for the resource poor farmers and lower the huge risks and transaction costs that hinder market development in Malawi. The specific objectives include the following:

·        Facilitate linkages between sellers and buyers, exporters and importers of agricultural commodities;

·        Empower farmers, traders, processors and other market participants with relevant and timely marketing information and intelligence that enhances their bargaining power and competitiveness in the market place;

·        Provide a transparent and competitive price discovery mechanism through the operations of the exchange trading floor; and

·        Harness and apply the power of information and communication technologies (ICTs) as a strategic tool for rural value addition and empowerment.

The major expected impact of MIS-Malawi is enhanced farm productivity, farm-gate prices, incomes, food security, reduced poverty and wealth creation in the agricultural sector and the national economy.

IDEAA Malawi project assumes the initial ownership and responsibility to develop the information system and subsequently would develop the necessary private sector capacity to manage and operate the system. IDEAA Malawi is implementing the project in collaboration with ICRISAT, Sasakawa Global 2000 Mobile phone service provider (TNM,), the Citizens’ Network for Foreign Affairs (CNFA) agro dealers and other stakeholders.

Sustainability of the project activities beyond donor funding has been considered critically through built in cost recovery mechanism and the formation of a wholly owned private sector company called Malawi Agriculture Commodity Exchange (MACE) in year five of the project. MACE is expected to operate commercially. In the first year of project implementation the services will be offered for free and increasing progressively towards full cost recovery in subsequent years for sustainability, while charges for users of SMS and IVMS will be introduced soon after these services have been developed and tested because such users are likely to afford to pay.  The free services in the first year are aimed at creating awareness, generate interest and also to ensure that the majority of the resource poor smallholder farmers gets access to the service.

2. Development Of A Sustainable Cassava Seed Market System In Malawi.

A University of Malawi Bunda College based Initiative for Development and Equity in African Agriculture (IDEAA) Malawi implemented a one year Sustainable Cassava Seed Market System program with financial assistance from the Rockefeller Foundation of US$ 80,010 from 1 August 2003 to 31 June 2004. The program complemented ongoing efforts by IDEAA Malawi of commercializing smallholder agriculture through cassava commercialization with other partners such as FAO by improving access of smallholder farmers to disease free cassava planting materials and develop the market for cassava seed.

The overall objective of the project was to develop a sustainable cassava seed market system in Malawi.

Specific objectives included:

·        Improve capacity of resource poor farmers to access clean planting materials of improved varieties.

·        Accelerate the multiplication of cassava planting materials through use of smallholder farmers under both winter and rain fed production systems

·        Strengthen capacity of farmers to undertake cassava seed production as a business through training, field days, exchange visits and demonstration, and

·        Identify key partners in the promotion of the crop and strengthen linkages with them to take advantage of the comparative advantages

The project was implemented within the project timeframe. Implementation was successful and concluded one month a head of schedule in June 2004. The activities implemented included:

·        Procurement and distribution of cassava planting materials under winter and rain fed conditions.

·        Capacity building of extension staff, and farmers to undertake cassava seed multiplication as a business through training, demonstrations, exchange visits and field days and

·        Market development through linking seed producers to buyers

The projected managed to distribute 668 metric tones (mt) of clean cassava stems to over 5,000 smallholders farmers scattered across the country. This represents 25% above the targeted number of 4,000 beneficiaries despite some problems, which were experienced during the process of distribution. This achievement had been possible because of the good relationship that the project established with other partners like Ministry of Agriculture, and the active involvement of the Cassava Growers Association.

A lot of interest into cassava by farmers has been generated, to the effect that there is still very high demand for disease free improved cassava varieties throughout the country. The increased demand is aggravated by the fact that the crop has low multiplication ratio and is bulky.

Planting materials distribution to selected farmers and clubs started in August 2003 under winter production. The summer production started in December 2003 and was done intensively for 3 months up to February 2004. Beyond February 2004 the program concentrated on capacity building activities of farmers and extension workers, market linkages and monitoring activities.

Involvement of the initial cassava association members in the identification of beneficiaries ensured that the seed was given to farmers who needed it and would be able to plant and manage it well as a business under the leadership of the association members.

The cassava seed distributed was used to set up individual and communal cassava seed multiplication business including farmer field schools.

Capacity building activities were also undertaken with the aim of improving technical skills of extension workers and farmers on cassava production. 91 extension workers were trained on cassava seed multiplication and certification, while 51 cassava association executives at the national and district levels participated in 8 field days, which were held one in each Agriculture Development Division (ADD). Under monitoring and evaluation, one program review meeting with extension workers and field-monitoring visits to a few selected farmers’ fields were undertaken.

The major challenge that the program faced was an increasingly high demand for disease free cassava seed. During the distribution farmers continued to demand more because the seed that was supplied was not adequate for their gardens. The extension workers also highlighted this during the progress review meeting.

The University of Malawi, on behalf of the communities who benefited from the program, is grateful to the Rockefeller Foundation for the financial and technical support rendered to IDEAA Malawi activities, without which, the program could have not succeeded to implement most of its planned activities. Special thanks go to Dr. Akin Adesina for his technical advice. The University of Malawi once again is grateful to the Rockefeller Foundation for the various financial support which has been rendered to the University of Malawi and in particular Bunda college, as such are looking forward to continued support.