Malawi’s economic base, agriculture, is dominated by least educated farmers that are less exposed to financial services and modern methods and technologies hence limiting productivity.
A census report by the National Statistical Office (NSO) launched on Monday in Lilongwe finds that 95 percent of farming households are into maize production hence productivity level is very low on international standards.
About 73 percent of the farmers only have primary education with average land holding of 0.9 hectares. Despite heavy investments made by the government in irrigation infrastructure, the country’s 4.9 million hectares have only 2.2 percent of cultivated land under irrigation.
With 97.7 percent of farming households doing crop production, the top commercial crop is soya beans at the rate of 85 percent, followed by irish potato at 82 percent.
Only about 39 percent of the farmers accessed extension services and this is identified as one of the reasons for low productivity.
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“Use of agricultural farm implements found to be skewed towards manual tools than mechanical or motorized equipment with his dominating at 97.4 percent, panga knives at 54.5 percent and axes at 47.3 percent hence indicating low usage of advanced farm machinery,” reads the report.
The World Bank supported the census after 20 years of the previous one and according to the Country Manager, Firas Raad, this has made the country do policies and programs that have not been based on the data.
He further said although the country has shown fiscal commitment in fulfilling the 10 percent agriculture share in the budget that has not translated into the requisite economic gains.
“Last time such a census was conducted was 2006. Since then, agriculture subsidies, climatic conditions and population size have shifted. That requires new data to inform policies and programs,” Raad said.
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Reacting to the findings, Minister of Agriculture Rosa Fatchi Mbilizi, who was present at the launch, said the government is empowered to design plans that improve productivity particularly in the smallholder sector, and to establish monitoring and evaluation indicators for tracking agricultural development programs.
“It also provides a reliable frame for future agricultural sample surveys, ensuring that our interventions remain anchored in robust evidence,” she said.
Agriculture sector accounts for 34.4 percent of the economy, while contributing over 85 percent of total exports and the recent decline in productivity has affected economic output.
