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Malawi

Improving sustainable agricultural practices and access to diversified livelihoods opportunities and savings groups could help increase Malawians’ resilience to droughts, floods, pests, and price shocks.

Overview

Resilience activities in Malawi aim to make the country’s largely poor and rural population less vulnerable to droughts, floods, pests, and price shocks. Because most people are engaged in agriculture, the Government of Malawi and international donors are focusing on sustainable agricultural growth, livelihoods, and nutrition.

Risk Environment

Malawi’s population remains largely poor and rural, with low agricultural productivity and limited opportunities for nonfarm employment. Most farmers rely on rainfed agriculture for food and income. Climate variability, recurring droughts and floods, pests such as fall armyworm, and price shocks, especially high costs of agricultural inputs, high food prices, and falling tobacco prices, all contribute to household vulnerability.

Some research suggests that fiscal mismanagement is a greater driver of economic volatility than weather shocks, and until recently, the Government of Malawi has focused far more on coping with shocks than mitigating them. Safety net programs, for example, remain extremely limited.

Resilience Approach

The Government of Malawi’s 2018 National Resilience Strategy shifted focus away from merely coping with shocks to building resilience through sustainable agricultural growth; risk reduction; flood control and early warning and response systems; human capacity; livelihoods and social protection; and catchment protection and management.

Donor activities focus on building food and income resilience by increasing access to and availability of diverse and nutritious foods; improving health and nutrition; and increasing access to improved agricultural technologies and practices that increase production, access to markets, and resilience of smallholder systems.

Opportunities for Strengthening Resilience

Results from one project showed that creating synergies and layering interventions is more effective in building household resilience than participating in just one intervention, and that sets of interventions should be tailored depending on the household’s situation. Studies from the project also showed that household participation in either a crop group or livestock group, coupled with participation in women’s empowerment or village savings and loan groups, accelerated resilience.

More About Malawi

Risk Profile

Malawi Resilience Factsheet

17 Jun 2022 - USAID

In Malawi, risk and exposure to shocks and stresses are driven by a confluence of over-dependence on rainfed maize and tobacco, unmodernized agriculture sector, dependence on biomass for energy resulting in...

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Risk Profile

Climate risk profile: Malawi

12 Feb 2021 - ATLAS - Adaptation Thought Leadership and Assessments

This profile provides an overview of climate risk issues in Malawi, including how climate change will potentially impact agriculture, water resources, fisheries, ecosystems and human health. The brief includes an...

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Discussion Paper

National Resilience Strategy: Breaking the Cycle of Food Insecurity in Malawi

23 Sep 2019 - Government of Malawi Department of Disaster Management Affairs

The National Resilience Strategy (NRS) introduces a new sense of common purpose to break the cycle of food insecurity in Malawi by bridging development and humanitarian interventions and prioritizing a continuum of...

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Policy Brief

Health, Resilience and Sustainable Poverty Escapes

25 Aug 2019 - Chronic Poverty Advisory Network (CPAN) , USAID Center for Resilience

Health intersects with resilience and sustained poverty escapes in at least three ways. Poor health reduces well-being and can be a shock or stressor at the individual, household, community or systems level. It...

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More Resources
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