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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

Technical Guidance

Technical Analysis to Inform the Trigger Design for Adaptive Safety Nets to Respond to Climate Shocks in Malawi

23 Jun 2023 - World Bank Group , Richard Choularton , Agrotosh Mookerjee , Meredith Mallory , Krishna Krishnamurthy , Rahel Diro , Evie Calcutt , Alejandra Campero

Discover how the Government of Malawi designed a scalable trigger mechanism to provide social protection during climate shocks.

View Resource
Report

Using Disaster Risk Financing to Build Adaptive Social Protection for Climate Shocks in Malawi

16 Jun 2023 - World Bank Group

In the face of drought, the Government of Malawi used adaptive social protection to support the resilience of over 100,000 households.

View Resource
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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