Feature

By Frazer Potani, Lilongwe, Malawi

Malawi’s districts such as Mwanza, Neno, Nsanje, Chikhwawa and Zomba in southern region are struggling to come to terms with the drought and food shortages but not people in Mwandama Village in Traditional Authority Mlumbe in Zomba.

Mwandama villagers are all wearing smiles because are both food secure and their lives have been transformed from poverty to prosperity.

40-year-old Rose Lenadi married with three children and also her late sister’s three children living with her, used to, few years ago struggle with her family to just have a single meal daily.
This is now history because her family now swims in plenty food, thanks to Mwandama’s transformation from a hunger addicted bowl to a plenty food basket.
“Around this time we used to sleep with nothing in our stomachs and many children especially under five suffered from malnutrition because the little food we produced and harvested would only last through August. For a period of six months we had no food,” said Lenadi also Vice Chairperson of her village’s committee.
Previously, during this lean period most villagers worked in the surrounding tobacco estates to solicit little money to buy food.
“This is not the case now because each household is food secure and currently in our community food bank built with donor support under MVP has 14,000 bags of maize, 200 bags of beans and another 200 of Soya beans each weighing 50 Kg,” said Lenadi.
She added that the plenty grain produced in her village also acts as a source for generating income for the village.
“Last year alone we generated K24 million from grain sales. The grain is sold at a price below that of ADMARC to enable local villagers buy it,” said Lenadi.
Further Mwandama village committee also distribute food to households without food especially those headed by vulnerable groups such as widows, orphans and the elderly.
Rather than purchasing inputs on credit, every household receive fully subsidized two bags of fertilizer and other inputs at the start of the season, and after harvest pay back two bags of maize to Mwandama Millenium Village Project (MVP) school feeding program.
“Since its establishment the MVP has transformed lives of up to 7,000 households in our area,” said Lenadi.
She disclosed that many houses in Mwandama Village have even removed and thrown away grass roofs replacing them with iron-sheets.
“At the rate which houses are wearing iron-sheets roofs in this village in few years to come there will be very few or no single hut thatched with grass,” said Lenadi as she wiped sweat on her forehead with a corner of her Chitenje (cloth).
However, villagers appealed to Malawi Government and its partners to among other things bring electricity, safe water and health facilities at Mwandama.
They disclosed that they have few boreholes and walk long distances to get access to them.
The villagers also said have no health facility hence walk long distances to seek medical treatment when they get sick.
“As a result, some pregnant women deliver on the way to a health centre and in some cases some have died on the way yet these deaths were avoidable,” said Lenadi.
She further said villagers also walk long distances as far as Thondwe to get to a maize mill for processing flour for nsima.
“Prospective millers are failing to install maize mills in our village because there is no electricity,” said Lenadi.
She also said her committee struggle to collect bags of maize from households for storage at the community food bank.
“We have to hire a 10 tone vehicle to transport the bags to our food bank and it’s very expensive,” said Lenadi.

According to UNDP, the Mwandama MVP cluster started in 2003 in partnership with Malawi Government’s fertilizer subsidy program by providing maize seed and fertilizers at a subsidized rate.
In 2007, Mwandama cluster had a tremendously successful harvest, producing crop yields averaging 5.5 tons of maize per hectare, an increase of 1100 percent since the start of the project.
Presently, many of Mwandama’s farmers are diversifying their production to include high value fruits, vegetables and herbs.
The MVP has also extensively trained farmers in livestock management, post-harvest management, irrigation and compost manure production and further supported some households to begin beekeeping.
Nearly 900 farmers have also participated in irrigation activities and winter cropping in the low-lying dambos.
Mwandama area is characterized by native vegetation of the Miombo woodlands.
The area is intensively cultivated both by smallholder farmers growing maize, pigeon peas, cassava, Irish potatoes, vegetables, tomatoes and groundnuts, and by the commercial estate owners growing tobacco and maize.
The main cropping season for the village runs between November and April and most of the crops are harvested around May.
Livestock management is also practiced and the common livestock are chickens and goats.

Mwandama has seven villages, population of over 35,000 and is one of MVPs clusters under UNDP and its partners meant to rescue vulnerable groups stuck in poverty in Africa with a slogan of ‘A New Approach to Fighting Poverty’.
Under the same project include Koraro (Ethiopia), Sauri and Dartu (Kenya), Ruhura (Uganda), Mayange (Rwanda), Mbola (Tanzania), Potou (Senegal), Tiby and Toya (Mali), Bonsaaso (Ghana), Pampaida and Ikaram (Nigeria).

Villagers in Mwandama are lucky because according to Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) eradicating hunger globally is a big challenge.

The organization discloses that at least one billion people accross the globe suffer from pangs of hunger or one in six people in the 6.5 billion plus population.

The agency further says a child dies of malnutrition every six seconds worldwide and more than 2.5 billion people worldwide depend for their income and nutrition on the efforts of small holder farming households particularly women farmers.

“Our challenge is not on how to ensure adequate food for the current 963 million hungry people, but also how we are going to feed a world population of over 8.3 billion people by 2030,” says organization adding that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon also considers food security one of global key priorities.

No wonder the FAO has praised President Bingu wa Mutharika for transforming Malawi from a food beggar to food producer and exporter within the region and beyond.
Mutharika however, said the battle against hunger in the country is not over.
He said his government is aware that some parts of Malawi are experiencing drought, therefore will source food to provide it to the needy.

Mutharika was however, quick to say once fully implemented the Greenbelt project will stump out all existing pockets of hunger in Malawi.