The Malawi Lake Basin Programme

A three-year pilot programme, “Livelihood Improvement for Rural Communities in Malawi”, is being be implemented in 6 Extension Planning Areas (EPA) of Salima and Mangochi districts of Malawi between 2006 and 2008. The programme has two components; Business Development, Organisation Development and Democracy; and agriculture, fisheries and community management of natural resources.

This initiative is a long-term commitment to entry into a bigger programme in future, which will target larger parts of the Malawi Lake-Basin, generating and exploiting all kind of synergies with neighbouring Mozambique and Tanzania. The expansion of the programme beyond 2008 will depend, to a large extent on the successes recorded during the initial three-year period, but also on the availability of funding.

The Malawi Lake Basin Programme has largely been influenced by the successes and experiences of three Malawian member based Rural Peoples’ Organisations, (Farmers Union of Malawi, FUM; National Smallholder Farmers’ Association of Malawi, NASFAM and Malawi Union of Savings and Credit Co-operatives, MUSCCO) and those from two Nordic organisations; Swedish Co-operative Centre (SCC) and Vi Agroforestry from Sweden.

The two Nordic organisations have a collective experience of over three decades of development work in Africa, which would be very useful in this programme. This experience encompasses, among others, work with farmers’ organisation development, improved marketing systems for farmers through commodity association development and Area Market Enterprises (AME