13 May - Mwandama's success story

Mwandama!

Another place we have heard much of and read about. Mwandama is the Malawian cluster within the Millennium Promise program. It is a cluster of six villages that is south west of Lilongwe towards Blantyre. The trip out there meant another hair-raising experience in a locally hired hylux with a door that literally came off. What was most telling perhaps is the lack of impact that this door-less vehicle had on its passengers – hey, we’ve seen, and been in, worse!

Mwandama was incredibly impressive. It is a village that is three and a half years into the program and has already made significant inroads into the world of sustainable development. Like Mbola in Tanzania, Mwandama is a Millennium village which is supported by locals working with locals for locals. The village chief, Mwandama, who has contributed land and payment in kind into the community project, and to whom the project owes its name, welcomed us with the grace of a humble old leader. It was an honour.

There were numerous successes of the project that impacted me:

In the agricultural area the project has constructed a massive structure that will be used to store village maize. The villagers had highlighted that they were losing maize to poor storage and were being exploited by being forced to sell when the market was flooded at harvest time. Now they will be able to defer sale until they are content that the price is right.

We met a local farmer that had initiated a natural irrigation scheme that was able to dramatically improve his output. Millennium Promise had further networked him with local supermarkets and he was supplying his vegetables to a market that was previously far from attainable.

We were shown water tanks that were being used to harvest rain water – the villagers explained that although they had recently had good rains, they were now prepared for a season of poor rainfall.

We met a woman who had started a home enterprise of embroidery and knitting. Through the involvement of Millennium promise she was able to access a loan via the bank that visited the village on Thursday afternoon. She is on the first tier of the loan structure and when she has repayed the loan she will be able to access a larger amount. She sat in front of us with her bank card and a level of pride to match.

None of these successes are new as a concept. These are initiatives that are already used across the development world. What is new is the idea of focusing on all these areas concurrently. The village of Mwandama has a level of potential above anything I have witnessed in Malawi and I have faith in the project succeeding. Mwandama has a chance at beating poverty.