I’ve just arrived in Malawi and it feels much like coming home. I work hard at not being complacent about the travel, and I don’t forget that I’m a guest in this most welcoming of countries, but there is something warm and special about Malawi that makes it easy to feel at home.

I don’t know whether football’s coming home to England – and, no, I’m not just here to escape the inevitably hysteria if that happens later today – but a brief stop on my long drive north let me take in a local football match. Much like at home, a local match in a village can feel so much more like the spirit of the game than any big, commercialised tournament. It seemed as if the whole village was watching and when I went to the filling station for petrol, they had to call the attendant from the sub’s bench to come and fill my tank!

It’s been a tough year so far for Malawi. The economy is fragile (I believe “broken” is the current refrain) and there have been unusual weather events causing drought in some places and extreme flooding in others. I drove North from Lilongwe on the Lakeshore Road and the road is in a terrible condition after flooding events earlier in the year. It took 7 hours to cover 200 miles with whole sections of the tarmac washed away completely while other sections had potholes so large that there was really no way round them. Hundreds of villages and perhaps a million people depend on this road to connect them with the main cities, so it’s a serious issue.

The main lakeshore road – all the tarmac is gone in many places.

Transport will be a theme of this trip and one of my main tasks is to conduct research in connection with our Innovate Uk transport project where we are seeking to extend the cold chain to link fruit and vegetables from our solar chill stores with the markets. As the number of greenhouses we support continues to grow, we are looking further and further away to find the best markets. Today’s drive on such a challenging road is a reminder of how difficult it is for farmers to get their crops to market.

Tomorrow I will be at our office in Mzuzu – once I find someone to fix the inevitable puncture on my car!