Agriculture
Malawi to launch agricultural commercialization project
January 08, 2020 / Bester Kayaye
Malawi’s State President Arthur Peter Mutharika will on Friday, January 10, launch the Agricultural Commercialization Project (AGCOM) at Bingu International Convention Centre (BICC) in Lilongwe.
Principle Secretary for the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development (MoAIWD) Gray Nyandule-Phiri says in a statement that the project is being implemented under the theme of ‘Agricultural Commercialization: Leveraging Cooperatives and Markets.’
Nyandule-Phiri explains that his Ministry is implementing the project in close collaboration with the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism (MoITT) and other stakeholders using proceeds of a loan from the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) amounting to US$ 95-million.
He says: “The objective of AGCOM is to increase commercialization of agricultural value chain products selected under the project including products of farms and agribusinesses, like crop, livestock, and fisheries products sold domestically or exported, with or without processing, depending on market requirements.”
“AGCOM is implementing a high impact Productive Alliance (PA) approach based on commercial agreement between the project supported Producer Organizations (POs) including farmer cooperatives and associations.”
The project is expected to benefit small-scale and emerging poor farmers (cultivating not more than eight hectors) and farmer organizations with capacity to produce beyond subsistence; agro-product buyers (processors, retailers, exporters, and aggregators) and; financial lending institutions for the agricultural sector.
AGCOM will also be paying special attention to women and youth based producer organizations to achieve the objective of having a minimum of 300 productive alliances and 100,000 farming households in 5-years’ time.
The project has four components namely: Building Productive Alliances that will be supporting the integration of small-scale and emerging farmers; Support Investment Enabling Services for Access to Agricultural Financing and Access to Land for Commercial Agriculture; Project Coordination and Management and; AGCOM approach in selecting the Value Chains (VC) to allow agricultural value chains have strong prospective commercial linkages.
AGCOM is being implemented through an independent Project Implementation Unit (PIU) whose operations started in July 2018.
The PIU is charged with the responsibility to oversee day to day project implementation, monitor progress, and coordinate and account for utilization of project funds.
The project will be implemented country-wide for six years from 2018 to 2023.
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