UNDP, JICA eager to improve livelihoods of vulnerable communities

As one way of building sustainable communities in the country, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in collaboration with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) have embarked on a project, which aims at   improving livelihood opportunities for vulnerable households through market-oriented agriculture.

Japanese Ambassador to Malawi, Yoichi Oya, said the project is improving the livelihoods of farmers in various areas, and has called upon farmers in the country to embrace modern farming in order to increase production, which at the end improves their livelihoods.

He has saluted UNDP for working hand in hand with the Ministry of Agriculture up to this far.

He was speaking this at Bvumbwe Research station in Thyolo where he toured training for extension workers in horticulture farming in order to appreciate the progress.

“I appreciate the efforts and commitment of the Department of Agriculture Extension Services (DAES) staff and extension workers. I heard that the Training of Trainers (ToT) is progressing well. This collaboration with UNDP and the Ministry of Agriculture will complete the Training of Trainers (ToT) for all extension workers in all districts of Malawi, this is truly a synergy of cooperation  between Japan, Malawi and UNDP,” he said.

UNDP representative to Malawi Fenella Frost said the project has a huge capacity of providing farmers opportunities to access bigger markets.

“We know that Agriculture is the backbone of Malawian economy and that it is very essential that we help poor and vulnerable communities to gain more money and eventually be able to get profits.

“We know it was a very hard year for farmers in Malawi we had Cyclones there were huge damages in most parts of the country and I think with these trainings for extension workers in many parts of the country is really very important as they will learn how to improve crop production and how farmers can talker some day to day challenges they face,” she said.

She also added by saying that this is not only a priority project as it is implemented only one year, but the governments of Japan and Malawi are taking this to be a long time initiative.

Kenneth Chaula, Deputy Director in the Department of Agriculture Extension Services, said imparting extension workers with more knowledge will have an advantage that smallholders farmers will also apply modern farming technologies.

“The approach will cover production, farm management aspects and also marketing aspects but within that we also promote gender mainstreaming to ensure that there is equitable distribution of benefits among the participants. So in this project we are targeting crops that are in horticulture families where we feel that farmers can make money in a given period of time,” Chaula said.

The project which is dubbed at “Promoting Peace and Social-Economic Empowerment through National Peace Agriculture and Sustainable Livelihoods is building capacity of 384 field staffs, which among them 277 are males and 107 are females and 6,438 farmers in farming groups which among them 2,868 are males and 3,570 are females have benefited in 24 district of Malawi.

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