Bordered by Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique lay a small landlocked country Malawi. Around one-third of Malawi’s gross domestic product (GDP) is contributed by the agri chain sector which is higher than any other country in eastern and southern Africa. Besides being a source of livelihood for 85 percent inhabitants, the sector employs more than 80 per cent of the labour force and generates around 80 per cent earnings through export.
Agriculture in Malawi is dominated by maize and tobacco followed by other food and cash crops such as cassava, sweet potatoes, sorghum, tea, sugarcane, cotton, and coffee. More than 80 per cent of the total arable land is cultivated by smallholder farmers. Most of these farmers are dependent majorly on the production of maize grown on 70 per cent of the arable land.
This led to increased imports of legume production such as soybean, pigeonpea, and groundnut causing a massive burden on the government’s exchequer. Hence, the government decided to diversify the production by distributing agri-inputs to grow the legumes.
Ineffective agri-value chain
Though the agricultural productivity in Malawi increased, crop yield of small-scale farmers either slowed down or declined. Limited access to improved crop varieties and fertiliser and lack of best management practices and poorly functioning markets resulted in low productivity, high sales costs (from limited storage and poor road infrastructure), and inadequate processing capacity.
At times, the ineffective value chain encompassing farmers and other actors (particularly off-takers) was triggering malpractices also by using paper coupons during agri-input distribution.
So despite immense agricultural strength, the agri sector in Malawi encountered only marginal improvements due to expensive agri-inputs (seeds and fertilisers), poor market access, and incompetent agri-technology, lack of financial credit, low investments, fluctuating prices, unpredictable climatic conditions and absence of buyers. Such factors resulted in low crop yields, and affected the livelihood of marginal farmers. There was a need for a holistic system to link farmers and marketers to agricultural inputs supply chain, finance and markets.
The Government of Malawi commissioned India-based RMSI to develop an innovative ICT-based Value Chain Governance (IVCG) Platform to augment the agro-input distribution system particularly among smallholder farmers and ensure higher economic returns on farmers’ produce.
The project was awarded by the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development (Government of Malawi) with the support from African Development Bank (AfDB) and financed by the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP).
The key activities included:
- Location-specific database of smallholder farmers including farmers’ profile, season-wise cropping distribution patterns, crop yields, use of various inputs (i.e., types of fertiliser, seed, agro-chemicals, irrigation system, usage of farming tools & equipment’s, etc), and financing requirements, etc.
- Management Information System (MIS) linking of agricultural value chain stakeholders
- Mapping of existing financial institutions and associated products to be availed in the agricultural sector
- Delivery of agro-inputs to farmers via stocking of agro-inputs by agro-dealers and redemption of inputs by farmers
- Management of sales transaction of the produce by the farmers to the off-takers
- Training and capacity building of the Government officials, agro-dealers, farmers, and other relevant stakeholders involved in agri value chain.
The primary objective of IVCG system was to develop ICT platform for the establishment of an agro-input network and online registration of farmers in the six districts of Malawi (Karonga, Nkhota-Kota, Salima, Machinga, Chikhwawa, Nsanje, and Thyolo) to facilitate agro-input distribution electronically among the farmers and linking of warehouse receipt system to the platform to keep track of deposit and sale of the commodities.
The innovative ICT platform helped in efficiently linking of farmers to input and output markets, extension, finance and information services, including weather services. This reduced information asymmetries with regard to farmer-specific productivity and output, site specific input requirements, financing needs and market opportunities. Besides being an efficient and transparent system, it ensured fair prices to farmers leading to higher economic returns on land, labour and capital.
Access of agricultural inputs to farmers is the backbone of increased productivity and profitability of value-added chains. Hence, to boost the leguminous crops (i.e., groundnut, pigeonpea, and soybean) production, the government worked with selected seed companies to give free seeds to the farmers.
Getting the best available seeds and fertiliser into the hands of smallholder Malawian farmers to raise current crop yields required an effective farmer database. Hence, a mobile application was developed by RMSI to collect location-specific information of smallholder farmers such as name, age, cropping patterns, productivity levels, landholding size, bank details, etc.
After thorough verification by the district coordinators, it was uploaded on the IVCG platform. The dynamic feature permits capturing of any number of user-specified attributes associated with a farmer and farm.
62,627 target beneficiaries (smallholder farmers) were registered using the mobile application and subsequently uploaded on the IVCG centrally located server.
Source: RMSI
