Comsip members on capacity building

Members of Kalolo-Tiyamike Community Savings and Investment Promotion (Comsip) from Chimsolo Village in Lilongwe have undergone a capacity building training aimed at empowering them on how to effectively run their grouping.

The members were trained on business management, financial literacy, environment conservation and sanitation.

Speaking at the end of the training, Supportive Cooperative Malawi manager, John Mulangeni said they decided to train the group to help them run their businesses professionally.

“Most people in rural areas depend on agriculture and the cooperative will be able to sell their agricultural produce basing on the skills acquired from this training,” he said, referring to vendors who take advantage of ignorance of farmers by buying their produce at lower prices.

Mulangeni encouraged chiefs to join the cooperative and take part in wooing their wives and community to join the group.

“A part from the lesson that you have leant here, you can also teach each other how to cook, knit or make other things that you see would help develop your families and area,” he said.

Chairperson of the cooperative Esime Chalamila said the knowledge acquired through the training will help members of the cooperative to do things professionally.

He said since the inception of the cooperative in 2010, they have had no lessons and this made them do things ignorantly.

“The lessons were an eye opener to the cooperative because we will change some of the ways we were running the cooperative,” said Chalamila.

Speaking earlier, Ministry of Gender, Community Development and Child Welfare community development assistant Sikinala Chakhwantha appealed to men to join the cooperatives.

He said women were the one patronising the cooperative and that some groups were formed by women only.

“Men have wrong perception towards cooperatives, they think they cannot develop from cooperatives and even if we reach them they show no interest. Women also think that if men join their group it will not grow,” said Chakhwantha.—Mana

Malawi could earn K6bn from cotton a year

Government says construction of multi-million kwacha Ngara Cotton Ginnery in Karonga District is in line with the vision to recover the country’s economy by ensuring that it exports more agricultural products.

President Joyce Banda said this on Monday when she officially commissioned Ngara Cotton Ginnery in the district.

The president said with an additional cotton ginnery, it means Malawi would export more volumes of the crop and boost foreign currency inflow for the smooth running of government operations.

‘‘This is one of the three [cotton] ginneries that my administration has constructed in all the regions of Malawi within two years. I promise to do more than this because I know that Malawians deserve better life,” she said.

Banda emphasised that her vision is to improve lives of Malawians, saying that could only be done by economically empowering people and ensuring that foreign currency is readily available.

Admarc general manager Jerry Jana told journalists that the construction of Ngara Cotton Ginnery will increase Malawi’s capacity of cotton processing which could earn the country K6 billion (US$14 354 067) from cotton per year.

He said beginning this year, almost 10 million tons of cotton would be processed within four months in Karonga, a development he said has attracted biggest cotton buyers in the world from Germany and South Africa.

Apart from improving the Malawi economy, the cotton ginnery is also expected to create more employment opportunities, especially the youths that are jobless.—Mana