Food Security & Resilience in Malawi

Food Security and Resilience

World Vision is working across Malawi to ensure that children do not go to bed hungry through the provision of the seeds and tools that help their families produce food sustainably.

What is the problem?

About 80% of Malawians depend on the farm. Unfortunately, low agricultural productivity, poor access to agriculture extension messaging and improved farm inputs, low access to markets and financial services, and poor natural resource management lead to lower yields.

To help vulnerable households produce enough food to meet their children’s nutrition needs, we are partnering with the government of Malawi to improve families’ access to food and resilience in the face of emergencies. We do this through the mobilisation of communities. By building their income-generating capacities, by helping them to produce commodities for food and by linking them to government extension workers, families are able to produce more food and more income. We also mobilise rural communities through savings groups that give vulnerable families access to loans, which help them start small-scale businesses and enables them to lift themselves out of poverty. 

In collaboration with VisionFund and Farm Concern International, we are implementing a five-year Transforming Household Resilience in Vulnerable Environments (THRIVE) programme. The programme which started in 2017 is working to build increased household incomes and productive assets, and enabling households to adopt improved farming and management of natural resources techniques; facilitating the transformation of smallholder farmers and their families from dependence to an empowered worldview.

Highlights of our work in 2021:

  • 4943 Savings Groups saved a total of $1,285,072 USD
  • 46,416 farmers reached in Improved and Sustainable Farming Technologies to increase production.
  • 37,043 farmers (male and female) reached with natural resources management practices messages

Related Resources:

 

Videos

  • Heart, Mind and Pocket; Transforming Farmers Lives in Malawi through Mindset Change
  • Transforming Farmers Lives through Empowered World View
  • World Vision helps improve community Agriculture