President Peter Mutharika has asked his Zambian counterpart Hakainde Hichilema for 200 00 metric tonnes (MT) of maize to help Malawi fill a food deficit, especially during the lean period.
Hichilema said this on Tuesday when he opened the 2025 Southern Province Investment and Trade Exposition in Livingstone Province in Zambia where he disclosed that his country has surplus maize.
He said: “After the drought, we have surplus food. And I am pleased to say to you that last night, my brother the new President of Malawi called me and said HH [Hakainde Hichilema] please keep 200 000 metric tonnes of maize for us.
“We will do it with pleasure. Thank you to our farmers, and for us, it will be money, we will earn money.”
In an interview yesterday, Mutharika’s spokesperson Shadric Namalomba confirmed that the President talked to his Zambian counterpart over the phone.
Earlier this week, Minister of Finance, Economic Planning and Development Joseph Mwanamvekha said the ministry, through the Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee (Mvac), established that more than four million people needed food assistance.
He said the affected people will not be able to meet their annual food requirement between this month and March next year, representing 22 percent of the national population.
“In order to protect livelihoods, the vulnerable population will require humanitarian food assistance that has been estimated at 200 000 metric tonnes of maize with an estimated cash value of K387.2 billion,” said Mwanamvekha.
Consumers Association of Malawi executive director John Kapito backed the government’s decision to import maize.
“It is a matter of life and death. People need food whether we want it or not,” he said.
Kapito said the 200 000MT may not be enough, as such government should continue negotiating with local farmers on prices so that the grain can be bought locally in the near future.
On September 2 this year, Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (Admarc) also announced plans to import 200 000MT of maize to ensure consistent availability of the commodity during the lean season.
The State produce trader said the decision to import was reached after a careful assessment of stock levels, market trends, flow of maize on the market and depots from local suppliers and the projected impact on household food security.
About 6 188 379 people faced hunger in the 2024/25 updated assessment while 4 402 000 people were hungry in the 2023/24 consumption year.
However, this year’s figure is higher than that of the 2022/23 and 2021/22 consumption years, when 3 818 554 and 1 496 394 were hungry, respectively.
In June this year, the World Food Programme projected Malawi’s maize deficit at 1.2 million MT or 33 percent of harvest. The national annual maize requirement is 3.7 million MT.
Earlier, Ministry of Agriculture had projected a maize deficit of 537 380MT in the 2024/25 growing season with Parliament approving K99.5 billion in the 2025/26 National Budget towards irrigation development to produce 337 000MT of maize on 56 113 hectares of irrigable land, which is still below the projected deficit.
Ministry of Agriculture’s strategy to bank on irrigation to cover the maize deficit and stabilise prices this year has drawn criticism, with agriculture policy experts casting doubt on its practicality.
