A fall armyworm outbreak, the first emergence of the pest in southern Africa, is causing considerable crop damage in some countries. If the pest damage aggravates, it could dampen prospects for good crop harvests that is anticipated in the current farming season. Maize, a staple food in the region has...

The programme’s goals were to increase the food security of smallholder farm households in southern Africa and enhance their livelihoods while conserving and improving the natural resources used for agriculture. The focus of the programme was on developing productive farming systems for smallholder farmers who managed maize-based systems, based on...

El Niño conditions have caused the lowest recorded rainfall between October and December across many regions of Southern Africa in at least 35 years. Short-term forecasts from January to March indicate the high probability of continuing below-normal rainfall in the south, signaling that this could become one of the worst...

As countries design climate change adaptation policies, it is important to understand how workers alter behavior in response to changes in temperature. Nonetheless, the impact of temperature on labor markets is poorly documented, especially in Africa. We address this gap by analyzing panel surveys of labor choices by sector, contractual...

Land degradation and soil erosion have emerged as serious challenges to smallholder farmers throughout southern Africa. To combat these challenges, conservation agriculture (CA) is widely promoted as a sustainable package of agricultural practices. Despite the many potential benefits of CA, however, adoption remains low. Yet relatively little is known about...

The Regional Initiative seeks to strengthen the programmes, mechanisms, capacity and delivery of actions needed to operationalize commitments to end hunger by 2025, and to support mapping exercises that identify gaps and determine requisite interventions to enhance policy dialogue on food security and nutrition, both at regional and country levels....

The Africa Solidarity Trust Fund (ASTF) is an innovative Africa-led fund to support Africa for African development initiatives. Its main goal is to strengthen food security across the continent by assisting countries and their regional organizations to eradicate hunger and malnutrition, eliminate rural poverty and manage natural resources in a...

The SADC Consultative Meeting on Preparedness and Response to the Impact of the 2015/16 El Niño on Agriculture and Food and Nutrition Security in Southern Africa was held from 25th to 26th February 2016 in Johannesburg, South Africa, with support from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations...

About 60 million people across Southern Africa and the Horn, Central America, and the Pacific face worsening hunger and poverty due to droughts and crop failures in 2014/5 that have been exacerbated by the El Niño weather system in 2015/6. This number is likely to rise. This short report gives...

This article presents findings on the local economy impacts of seven African country SCT programmes evaluated as part of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) “From Protection to Production” (PtoP) project. The countries are Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The PtoP project has facilitated expansion of...

  This paper investigates how household agricultural involvement affects food consumption and dietary diversity in rural Malawi. Ceteris paribus, a 10 per cent increase in on-farm income share increases food consumption per capita by 2.9 per cent, calorie intake per capita per day by 1.7 per cent, and leads to small...

This report evaluates the productive impact of the Malawi Social Cash Transfer Programme (SCTP). The report uses data collected from a randomized experimental design impact evaluation to analyse the impact of the SCTP on household decision-making over agricultural production, labour supply, the accumulation of private assets and other income generating...

The 88 page illustrated book showcases 15 case studies, showing how agroecology benefits Africa in terms of food and nutrition, livelihoods, restoration of biodiversity, knowledge and innovation, and climate change resilience. Leading experts in their fields explain how agroecology reforms food systems to promote better nutrition and health, especially among poor...

Malawi is a small country located in southern Africa with only 119,000 km2 for a population of about 16.7 million people. With agriculture as the mainstay of the economy, Malawi’s high population density of 140 people/km2 requires that agricultural productivity and other ecosystem services must be optimized. As part of...

In the last two decades, food security policy in Malawi has focused on enhancing the maize productivity of smallholder farmers, primarily through the Farm Input Subsidy Programme (FISP) (Chirwa and Dorward 2013). While this has raised maize yields, production shocks, such as droughts and floods, continue to result in wide-spread...

Malawi is a small country located in southern Africa with only 119,000 km2 for a population of about 16.7 million people. With agriculture as the mainstay of the economy, Malawi’s high population density of 140 people/km2 requires that agricultural productivity and other ecosystem services must be optimized. As part of...

Malawi has the potential to reorient its smallholder agriculture away from being primarily directed towards assuring household subsistence and self-sufficiency to increased commercial production, including of soyabean. This shift would reduce the country’s reliance on tobacco and diversify its agricultural production and exports. As a legume, furthermore, soyabean would also...

Le Malawi est un des pays les plus pauvres et les plus densément peuplés d’Afrique subsaharienne. Les faibles moyens économiques du pays ont fait de l’agriculture familiale le pilier principal de l’économie malawienne. En effet, plusieurs études ont été faites dans le but d’évaluer l’impact des faibles moyens économiques sur...

Building an enterprise takes many different tasks, from stepping into the shoes of potential customers to designing products or services, to running a marketing campaign. This was one of the key messages for women farmers at SACAU’s Agro-preneurship training in Johannesburg this month. The three-day training from 27th – 29th September...

El Niño is the warming of sea surface temperature in the tropical Pacific, which occurs roughly every 2 to 7 years, lasting from 6 to 24 months. While the main threat to food production is reduced rainfall and drought in some regions, El Niño can also cause heavy rains and...