Group sets roadmap for agricultural diversification

A Malawi-based American firm The Palladium Group has called for increased farmers’ access to capital and low-cost equipment to ensure agricultural value chains and income diversification.

The group will implement the Growth Poles Project (GPA), a $40 million project funded by the United States Agency for International Development created to expand the scope of economic opportunities for local farmers and diversify their sources of income.

The GPA project will also support micro-finance institutions, banks and local non-governmental organisations to facilitate access to capital, lines of credit, extension/business services, and agricultural technologies to ensure smallholder communities can capitalise on these new value chain opportunities.

Growth Poles chief of party Tate Munroe said previous experience from their other programmes shows that strategic partnerships between private sector firms and micro-finance institutions improve smallholder farmers’ access to low-cost technology.

In an e-mailed response, he said his organisation will leverage its existing partnerships with other firms and groups such as the Women’s Legal Resources Centre and Community Finance to provide low-cost financing to farmers.

Said Munroe: “Any investment made through GPA with the private sector will always be made in mind with how smallholder farmers can benefit and how it will ultimately support the Malawian economy.

“We are collaborating with these private sector partners because of the investment, scale and resources we can leverage.”

In an earlier statement posted on the group’s LinkedIn page, Palladium senior managing partner Ricardo Michel called on global agricultural companies to “leverage their infrastructure and strong relationships with farming communities to diversify with more resilient, nutritious, and economically competitive crops, including groundnuts, soya beans, mangoes, and macadamia”.

In a press statement announcing the launch of the programme, Usaid mission director Pamela Fessenden said the project will “support Malawi 2063 by accelerating environmentally sustainable, socially inclusive and economically resilient wealth creation”.

Pillar one of the Malawi 2063 prescribes enhancing agricultural productivity and commercialisation as the key enabler of economic growth in the local agrarian economy.