NEWS:

13 Feb, 2018


Some of the participants at the meeting
Amidst growing challenges which are climatic, environmental, economic and social in nature, Malawi Government needs to increase agricultural production to support growing population with sufficient and nutritional food.

These challenges suggest the need to adopt sustainable agricultural intensification (SAI), whereby intensification is increasing agricultural production per unit of input such as land or animal.

This was said during a recent stakeholders meeting at Ufulu Garden's in Lilongwe.

Speaking at the official opening of event, Assistant Chief Agricultural Extension Officer, Mr. Anderson Chikomola, who was the guest of honour, said sustainable agricultural intensification seems to be a vehicle to addressing the myriad challenges constraining the agricultural and other related sectors.

“Developing equitable and sustainable agricultural intensification presents a complex challenge. This is the case due to factors such as incomplete knowledge, uncertainty, diverse values and different interests among the stakeholders,” said Mr. Chikomola.

He said in that regard, multi-stakeholder, social learning processes emerge as a way to mitigate the challenges, saying it is envisioned that these processes will permit different perspectives to be shared and discussed, scenarios and options to be jointly assessed, allow for inclusivity and collaboration in decision-making, strengthen the capacity and building the commitment to act.

“It is against this background that the Sustainable Agricultural Intensification Research and Learning in Africa (SAIRLA) program was conceptualized and started in 2015. I am aware that the Department for International Development (DfID) is funding the SAIRLA Program, which is managed by WYG and Natural Resource Institute (NRI) in the United Kingdom,” said Mr. Chikomola.

He further said it is believed that the capacity of the NLA participants to analyze and engage in policy and investment processes will be strengthened and that the capacity of decision makers (policy makers and investors) to develop and implement evidence-based policies and investments that benefit all including the poorer smallholder, women and youth will also be strengthened.

According to the Malawi NLA National Coordinator, Dr. Daimon Kambewa, SAI requires an enabling policy environment and investment support, saying this is the reason why the initiative aims to generate, share and facilitate use of knowledge by decision makers to develop sustainable agricultural intensification (SAI) in ways that enable poorer smallholders, particularly women and youth in Africa to participate in and benefit from agricultural development.

“The vision of NLA is to be a vibrant forum for delivery of equitable effective polices and investment processes in sustainable agricultural intensification in Malawi,” said Dr Kambewa.




Written By: Patricia Ngwale