Malawi/Swaziland Visit - Saturday 17th March

Head north for Karonga through the hills north of Mzuzu and eventually follow a deep descent down to the lake. Arrive before 12 and Stephen takes us smoothly to our Lodge which is very comfortable and quiet. There’s a lot going on in the background to our visit. Lawrence, the Association Business Manager now has to go to Lilongwe for an urgent meeting on Monday morning so is driving up from Mzuzu to meet us and then getting the bus all the way back to Lilongwe.

All this we learn when Howard, who has visited us regularly in Scotland, arrives with his wife Susan and Webster, the KASFA chairman. Suddenly it looks as if the critical business may be done in the next few hours.

Certainly, it’s a very full meeting. There are clearly some critical decisions to be taken in NASFAM over the next few days and we’ll doubtless hear in due course to what extent the local associations like KASFA will get more responsibility. KASFA seem to be one of the most effective of all the associations and Lawrence has just been recognised as the leading business manager in NASFAM.

Most encouragingly we learn about the way that the major project we ran four years ago has been doing since it finished. Under a grant from the Scottish Government, KASFA was able to buy 5MT of basic seed from the research station at Lifuwu, train 250 lead farmers to grow it on as certified seed and distribute 20kg each to 5000 farmers. This created a seed bank as the farmers paid back 40kg each. The new certified seed has proved much more productive than the recycled seed which farmers had been using. Howard reckons that yields have increased by 35 – 40%. Not only that but last year they were able to use the seed bank to repeat the whole process. They bought new seed from Lifuwu, grew it on, and distributed over 100MT new certified seed to their members.’

That’s not all, 4 years ago under the Scottish Government grant they were given money to buy 50 locally made ox-carts. They sell these to their members on an instalment basis. As the money comes in they buy more ox-carts, and so on and on. By now 253 members have ox-carts which are invaluable for all sorts of transportation needs. That’s all so good to know: we had said it would but knowing that it did is very exciting. At a rough guess that’s an extra £150,000 worth of seed and equipment which KASFA has benefitted from since 2016 as a result of their careful management.

This is the first time that I have really had close, face to face discussions with Lawrence Kanjira and it’s a really good experience. He was a lawyer before he came to work for KASFA and has obviously got to know the business very well. He’s got a lot of the detail at his finger tips and is full of good ideas about how to develop the business. We run through areas for future development and make a lot of progress very quickly. It’s amazing what can be done if people get themselves organised and have a clear vision of what they want to do.