Project News

For 3 days from 26th to 28th of November 2019, 22 government officers/JICA National Staff from 12 African countries came to Malawi to attend the third country training of the captioned training program. On the first day, the background, progress and challenges of the SHEP activities in Malawi were introduced. Mr. Pearson Soko, the Project Manger encouragingly mentioned, "In spite of the budget constraint, we managed to implement SHEP pilot activities from a small scale. In addition, enthusiasms and motivations of the government officers and frontline staff are the key to a successful implementation". The participants seemed greatly inspired by the presentation of how Malawi initiated the SHEP activities. Following this session, the lecture and exercise on market survey were carried out and this enabled the participants to understand the methodology of market information collection and analysis in depth.

On the second day, the participants visited Dowa district with 1-hour driving from Lilongwe. In the morning, the District Agriculture Officer explained the roles of the district staff and frontline staff in MA-SHEP activities, and the remarkable impacts on the ground were also presented. In the afternoon, the participants visited one of the target groups, Mndila Irrigation group. At the field, a participant asked a male farmer "It seems you work very hard and steadily, the economic benefits are clearly seen from what we have observed. What are your challenges going forward?" The farmer answered, "The Challenge is market, because market needs can always change, so we need to grasp market trends periodically in order to continue growing to sell". We are very proud of the farmer. Another female farmer also explained, "Through participating in MA-SHEP gender awareness training, we have drawn vision for coming three years by sharing different ideas and opinions among male and female members. The training encouraged us to make decisions jointly within households to achieve our visions. For example, we bought chemical fertilizers and bicycles after the discussion with my husband how to use the profit gained from sales."

On the third day, participants learnt how to select crops based on the market survey results and how to make a crop production and marketing calendar practically. In the afternoon, we worked together to improve their action plans which were drafted in Japan. We expect that each participant could implement SHEP pilot activities smoothly based on the action plans.

The third country training in Malawi will continue to play an important role to achieve "SHEP for 1 million small-scale farmers" and we would be very happy if the MA-SHEP team could make further contributions to empowerment for small-scale farmers in Africa.

Mr. Pearson Soko (Project Manager) explained the impacts and benefits of MA-SHEP

Market Survey Exercise in Lilongwe

Field Visit at Mndila group in Dowa district

Commemorative Photo