World news moves at such a pace that it’s difficult to keep up. It was only last August that President Trump announced sweeping cuts to the US AID programme, with massive implications for Malawi. People are still talking about it: acknowledging the pain of the cuts, while simultaneously saying that Malawi must stand on its own feet and take control of its future.
What has gone almost unnoticed is that our own government – a Labour government, no less – sneaked through cuts to UK AID on the coattails of Trump, and the UK government cuts are quicker and deeper than those of America. The combined affect for Malawi is profound. Apparently, this is necessary because of a cost of living crisis back home, but every visit here in Malawi reminds me what poverty really looks like.
As we continue our moves towards a merger of MFT and Bananabox Plus, we are thinking about the funding environment that now prevails in Malawi. Where once there were grants available to help empower small scale farmers, we now know that we will have to evolve to a much more sustainable financial model. Thankfully, we have a plan!
We have four small farms and we have been working on a plan to upgrade all of them. In total, there are 11 hectares and we plan to install irrigation throughout. Three will also have greenhouses to grow tomatoes and peppers, while the beautiful Bula Farm will be planted out with avocado, coffee and bananas. The plan allows us to utilise all of MFT’s experience with boreholes; shallow wells; solar pumps; drip irrigation and sprinklers. The emphasis is on growing higher value crops to a good standard, and so building a solid income foundation for BBP/MFT.
The change here is subtle but important: in the past, we have worked to provide this technology for others. Nearly 1,000 farmers have our solar pumps and 500 women are farming in greenhouses we erected. We are proud of all that, and we have empowered these farmers to increase their household incomes and so educate their children, improve their homes, and much more. But we have relied on grants to do it. Now we are building these farms so we can earn enough to cover all our running costs and generate an income stream which will allow us to continue this work in a world of Trump and Starmer overseas aid cuts.
It’s not all about farm equipment and infrastructure, of course. All good plans have people at the heart and our merger is bringing together the leadership skills of Willan Kalinda of Bananabox Plus and Atusaye Kayuni of MFT; they are our dream team to make the plan a reality.
Malawi Fruits 