Malawi

Country Context

Malawi is a landlocked country in southern Africa where more than 80 percent of the working population is employed in agriculture, largely through smallholder subsistence farming. Over 40 percent of the country’s population is under age 15, and a majority falls within the working-age population. Their livelihoods are shaped by ongoing economic shocks, climate stress and limited market access, which contribute to widespread poverty. An estimated 70 percent of Malawians live in extreme poverty, according to the most recent household survey data.

Malawi’s large, young population provides opportunities to reimagine agriculture and food systems through technology and innovation and drive a decline in poverty. To move toward agribusiness entrepreneurship, smallholder farmers and farmer organizations need sustained financial and technical investment. These inputs can raise production, strengthen climate resilience, improve business management, expand access to capital and connect farmers to profitable and inclusive markets. Over time, this shift can help stabilize incomes, create jobs and reduce vulnerability for rural households.

Our Response

Heifer Malawi integrates social capital development with a market-centered value chain approach to create an enabling environment for family well-being and economic growth. This approach ensures development is locally led, enabling families, project participants and other stakeholders to find solutions to the challenges they face in the market system while tackling constraints such as limited access to finance, weak market connections and gaps in technical support that discourage smallholder farmers’ participation in the agricultural economy.

Heifer Malawi facilitates value-chain development and empowers farmer organizations to help communities build long-term resilience. This effort includes improving smallholder organizations’ business management and institutional capacity, facilitating access to finance for loans and investments, supporting farmers to boost production and productivity and enhancing connections to structured markets. Heifer Malawi’s targeted value chains create jobs and opportunities for women and youth, increasing their incomes so they can better support their families.

Our primary objective is helping families achieve a sustainable living income, our measure for the amount of money required for a decent life — including safe shelter, nutritious food, clothing, education and health care — while also reaching additional benchmarks for economic and climate resilience.

The Malawi Signature Program

Heifer International’s work is organized at the country level into signature programs focused on large-scale, measurable and sustainable impact achieved by building partnerships at all levels. Each program supports farmers through time-bound projects designed to increase their household income.

Malawi Accelerate Signature Program

The Malawi Accelerate Signature Program (MSP) is focused on building the economic resilience of 500,000 smallholder farmers so they can achieve a sustainable living income by 2030. The program uses a market-centered approach to improve agricultural efficiency, reduce market failures and create opportunities for smallholder farmers in the beef cattle, dairy, banana, nuts, oilseeds, poultry and rice value chains.