By Gospel Mwalwanda:
‘Thabalaba’ is Malawi’s ‘real gold’ with potentially huge economic benefits for the country, says the Minister of Natural Resources and Climate Change, Owen Chomanika.
According to Chomanika, the tuber is an important plant that should be grown at household level to improve people’s lives.
“It’s very profitable. We have to domesticate it,” Chomanika said in Nsanje when he visited the district during his familiarisation tour.
The visit took him the Matandwe Forest Reserve where the Shire Valley Transformation Programme (SVTP) is implementing natural resource management interventions.
The forest reserve is a habitat for Jateorhiza palmata, the scientific name for a climbing plant locally known as ‘Thabalaba’ whose root tuber is highly sought after for its medicinal properties.
The cassava-like tuber has a bitter taste. It is said to be useful for numerous ailments, including treatment of fever, diarrhoea, rheumatism, and relieving vomiting and nausea.
In addition, while there is no proven scientific evidence yet, locals say the tuber also enhances a man’s sexual potency.
It is also believed that anti-venom for snake bites can be made from the tuber.
The plant is native to tropical southeastern Africa and present in Malawi, Tanzania, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
Vendors from distant places flock to Nsanje to buy the root tuber, but offer very low prices.
Through the SVTP intervention, communities are now aware of the procedures they have to follow for them to achieve fair trade of the tuber using the Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) guidelines.
The government developed the ABS guidelines in 2021 to ensure fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from utilisation of genetic resources.
Speaking when he addressed district council members, Chomanika described Thabalaba as Malawi’s ‘real gold’.
He spoke of the need to domesticate the plant to empower locals economically and save the Matandwe Forest Reserve from depletion.
He said government has instituted a research to see if the plant could be domesticated.
In January 2024, the Department of Environmental Affairs established 10 community research plots in Zunde, Mpatsa, and Magoti Extension Planning Areas (EPAs) in Nsanje.
The SVTP is financially supporting the study.
Of the 10 plots, seven are functioning and were harvested in December 2024. The failure of the three has been attributed to management issues.
Chomanika urged researchers in local universities to get involved and conduct further analytical studies about the plant.
He decried the exploitation of locals by unscrupulous buyers who offer low prices, capitalising on the sellers’ ignorance of its high monetary value when sold overseas.
“What we need now as government together with other stakeholders is to do a proper market research and link the local seller to the [foreign] buyer, taking out the middleman,” he said.
He said the middleman had to be removed if ‘Thabalaba’ was to make a positive impact on the locals.
SVTP Deputy Project Coordinator, Limbani Gomani, pledged the programme’s support to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Climate Change in its conservation efforts in the Shire Valley.
Gomani said that ‘Thabalaba’ was linked to the SVTP because “it’s an integral part of component 4 of the project that deals with natural resource management.”
“Irrigation alone on its own may not be sustainable without conserving the environment,” he said.
The SVTP is an ambitious, multibillion kwacha flagship project of the government that aims to transform the Shire Valley into an economic hub through commercial farming, using irrigation.
The Department of Irrigation in the Ministry of Agriculture is implementing the programme. Other implementing partners include other government ministries and departments.
The Malawi Government, World Bank, African Development Bank, and Opec Fund for International Development are financing the SVTP.
The SVTP will irrigate 43,370 hectares of land by abstracting water from the Shire River at Kapichira Dam and conveying it to the irrigable areas in Chikwawa and Nsanje through canals.
The objective of the programme is to transform subsistence smallholder farmers into commercial ones. The SVTP is expected to benefit 223,000 people in 48,400 households in the two districts.
Construction of the 118-kilometre irrigation canal from Kapichira Dam in Chikwawa to Bangula in Nsanje is currently underway.
Gomani said government decided to introduce natural resources interventions in the project’s catchment area to conserve water, the main resource needed for irrigation farming.
“To promote conservation in the catchment, the project decided to enhance livelihoods of people surrounding the SVTP irrigation area by promoting natural resources management interventions, including the cultivation of Thabalaba,” he said.
Gomani said: “Thabalaba is very marketable and will improve people’s livelihoods. Communities will stop cutting trees in protected areas.”
Nolipher Mponya, the lead scientist in the Thabalaba domestication research, told the Minister that it had been proven within 11 months that Thabalaba could be grown as a domesticated crop.
“It is a national treasure. Malawi should promote it,” said Mponya, Principal Research Scientist at the Malawi Plant Genetic Resources Centre in the Department of Agricultural Research Services.
She said the Thabalaba population in Nsanje had declined from 16 plants per hectare to 13 per hectare. This means that the plant is still under threat, hence the need to domesticate it.
If the domestication research proves a success, the Thabalaba plants growing in the wild would be used for back up only.
As of 2016, 60 metric tonnes of dried Thabalaba were being traded annually in Malawi, with the tonnage translating to 1138 hectares of conservation land, according to Mponya.
Mponya said: “So with the nature of Thabalaba, the quick way to realise this tonnage is through promoting cultivation, hence the need to conduct domestication research.”
“Preliminary results of Thabalaba domestication indicate that it can be domesticated and planted as a crop. It takes about 11 months to harvest.”
Mponya in her speech echoed the Minister’s sentiments, saying that while they were doing their research on Thabalaba, the country’s universities should also do their part.
Nsanje District Council Chairperson, Hussein Ngwali, said Thabalaba could be the solution to the problem of shortage of foreign exchange Malawi was grappling with.
“If we do well growing Thabalaba, we will solve the issue of forex,” Ngwali said.
