Agriculture remains the mainstay of Malawi’s economy, contributing significantly to employment, economic growth, export earnings, poverty reduction, food security, and nutrition. It also plays a critical role in ensuring sustainable use of natural resources. However, we must confront and overcome several challenges in the sector, including low agricultural productivity, susceptibility to weather shocks, and poor management of land, water, and soils. All of these pose a threat to food security and nutrition in the face of a growing population, increased land pressure, and climate change. In trying to address these challenges in the past, Malawi has over-concentrated on maize self-sufficiency for food and tobacco as a cash crop, at the expense of other agricultural commodities, including livestock and fisheries. Moreover, the sector remains predominantly subsistence-oriented. In response, the NAP seeks to sustainably transform the sector from a subsistence to a marketorientation in order to increase agricultural production, marketed surpluses of commodities, and real incomes.
With regard to food security, the principal responsibility of agriculture is to produce sufficient diverse and nutritious foods, provide reliable food markets, and increase agricultural incomes. However, food security and nutrition are not the sole responsibility of agriculture. Therefore, the vision of the NAP to assuring food security and nutrition is a more coordinated and diversified approach through the commercialisation of agriculture. Commercialising smallholder farmers will thus be the principal focus of this policy in order to optimise resources under smallholder subsector. However, the NAP recognises all types of entrepreneurial farmers and will support them to increase the scale and quality of their production, while promoting pro-poor linkages between large-scale estates and smallholder farmers. This must be accompanied by strategies elsewhere in government that will enable many Malawians to transition out of agriculture into remunerative non-agricultural employment, while also providing social protection services for the most vulnerable.
The NAP is premised on a spirit of inclusiveness and coordinated partnerships.
In developing the policy, nationwide consultations were conducted at district and national levels. Over 50 focus group discussions were conducted with farmers, government staff, subject matter specialists, NGOs and civil society, the private sector, the youth, development partners, academia, and research organizations, with 22 percent representation of women. In addition, proposed inputs for the NAP were solicited through national and local media outlets.
This resulted in several organizations and individuals providing substantive independent contributions to the NAP’s content.
The NAP is aligned with several international agreements and protocols on agriculture, including CAADP; the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition; and regional commitments under SADC and the COMESA. Within Malawi, the sector has a harmonised investment framework called ASWAp through which development partners pools resources to support the sector.
With these partnerships and the strong commitment of the Government of Malawi, I believe we will transform agriculture in Malawi into a vibrant and commercially-oriented sector.
May God bless Malawi.
Dr. George T. Chaponda, MP
Minister of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development