Malawi is one of the countries in Southern Africa that relies on agriculture.
Smallholder farmers in the country produce about 80 percent of Malawi’s food and 20 percent of its agricultural exports.
To ensure that smallholder farmers are producing quality products, NASFAM is helping smallholder farmers to improve production and productivity.
The Norwegian Ambassador to Malawi Ingrid Marie Mikelsen said the country has the potential to improve on industrialisation if it can focus more on value addition and Agro-processing.
Mikelsen said quality value-added products will help to reduce imports in the country.
Speaking after visiting NASFAM processing facilities at Kanengo in Lilongwe, the Norwegian Ambassador to Malawi said the country needs to invest more in value addition in order to export more and reduce imports.
‘We are so proud of this side of Norway to be siding with NASFAM, helping smallholder farmers in developing better products in a more climate-smart way. The farmers are securing better access to markets and are adding value to their products other than transferring better quality of the products they have,’ said Mikelsen.
In her remarks, NASFAM Chief Executive Officer, Betty Chinyamunyamu, said NASFAM is planning to increase its production in order to satisfy both domestic and export markets.
‘The whole objective of exporting is to help the country have a better trade balance and as NASFAM we look at it from two angles, first of all import substitution and most of the products that we are are producing are already contributing to import substitution.
“For example, there was a time when we were importing a lot of maize flour from South Africa and Zambia, but the maize flour we are producing is of comparable quality to the one that we are importing,’’ said Chinyamunyamu.
The Norwegian Government is supporting NASFAM with equipment as well as helping smallholder farmers to ensure that they have reliable marketing systems.
