Folks, is it not a tragic irony that the Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (Admarc), founded in 1971 to feed Malawians, among others, now finds itself besieged by sheriffs and is grappling with frozen bank accounts?
Once a pillar of hope to drive our economy, uplift smallholder farmers, stabilise food prices and export agricultural surpluses to hungry neighbours on the continent and beyond, Admarc is currently a symbol of political incompetence. The State-owned enterprise can no longer fulfil its mandate, leaving millions of desperate Malawians scavenging for mangoes, buffalo beans (chitedze) and wild yams to stay alive.
Meanwhile, vendors are capitalising on such desperation and selling maize at high prices, with a 50-kilogramme bag sometimes going for as much as K65 000 in some areas.
But how did we get here? What happened to campaign promises of restoring the grain trader’s lost glory?
Those who boasted during the 2019 and 2020 campaigns that they would fix Admarc in a flash once elected because, after all, they created it and had unrivalled expertise in running, seem equally lost as a hungry man in search of a meal in barren fields.
The very architects of Admarc are now scratching their heads, unsure whether to rebuild the house or simply let it collapse into rubble.
The grain trader is crippled by years of political interference, inefficiency, neglect and corruption. Its latest challenge—a K25 billion court order to compensate 3 282 employees retrenched in January 2023—has led to frozen bank accounts and asset seizures, further deepening its struggles. Admarc cannot fulfil its mandate as a price stabiliser or provide smallholder farmers with a reliable market, leaving farmers at the mercy of intermediaries who buy their produce at unfair prices and sell it back to Malawians at exorbitant rates.
But the bigger question should be what is the future of Malawi’s food security? A State enterprise that could have been restructured to thrive in a liberalised economy was instead hollowed out by political greed and incompetence. The story of Admarc’s decline is a case of missed opportunities. The ghosts of the once agricultural powerhouse now haunt its ruined offices and frozen bank accounts.
A few years after helping Malawi to gain independence from Britain in 1964, founding president Ngwazi Hastings Kamuzu Banda encouraged Malawians to embrace agriculture as the backbone of our economy, with Admarc as the bedrock of this ambition. “We have no minerals. The soil is our gold mine,” he declared!
Sadly, Kamuzu’s vision of a self-sustaining agricultural nation has never seemed so distant. As the country faces a looming hunger this year, will our politicians, including parliamentarians allow Admarc to crumble? Or will they find ways to rescue it?
Time is running out, and the choice is in their hands to help Malawians honour the Ngwazi’s challenge to till the soil harder, but also to fix the system (Admarc) that ensures its fruits reach every Malawian.
If not, the gold mine that is our soil may never yield prosperity again.
My fellow Ngonis from Edingeni, home to Inkosi Ya Makhosi M’mbelwa V, created a Ngoma song that echoed the wisdom of the Ngwazi’s message. It went: aNgwazi bayowoya, limaninge chomene, ndalama ndalama, oooh ndalama zili mudongo! (the Ngwazi has told us to till the ground hard because money is in the soil.)
This song was not just a melody, but also a rallying call, a reminder that our wealth lies beneath our feet, in the fertile soil of Malawi, with Admarc as the bedrock of this ambition.
