“We believe that there are a great many more opportunities for small-scale farmers to be more actively involved in aquaculture and poultry value chains,” explains Frank Tembo of CASA Malawi. Frank and his team are scouting for more partners in aquaculture and poultry value chains to facilitate this approach in Malawi.
Frank continues, “We are looking for around 10 sound business ideas that can create opportunities for smallholder farmers at scale. We can provide the technical support and help unlock finance for the most commercially viable models.”
This opportunity is open to small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), farmers organizations and cooperatives.
Last year the CASA Malawi team developed strategies for the aquaculture and poultry sectors. Both strategies seek to deepen the commercial participation of small-scale producers in viable input and output markets. The strategies propose that key sector organisations and enterprises will need support to access finance to commercialise new and inclusive business models.
Frank concludes “We are now looking for around 10 more partners to put the strategies into practice. We are sure that there are great new ideas that deserve investment. There are also other initiatives that have already been implemented and have the potential to work with many more small-scale farmers and SMEs. Finally, many organisations will have piloted business ideas in the past that hadn’t worked as anticipated. We are well placed to examine the evidence from these schemes and reboot them so that they can thrive.”
| Sector | SME-led business models | Producer organisation-led business models | Business enabling environment |
| Aquaculture | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| Poultry | 3 | 1 | 1 |
CASA Malawi’s sector aquaculture and poultry development project
Enterprises and farmer organisations have until 29 March 2021 to contact the CASA Malawi team with their submissions.
Full details of opportunities in Malawi
| Frank Tembo became the manager for CASA Malawi in early 2021. Frank is an agricultural economist. His career has been dedicated to improving food security livelihoods of small-scale farmers in Africa. He also has experience of enterprise development, local value chain development and technical assistance across public and private sectors. CASA Malawi is delivered by NIRAS. The priority sectors for investment in Malawi are poultry and aquaculture. |
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I would like to know more about poultry financial support. I have land, poultry house for 1500 chickens (layers). I have cages for 768 chickens. All I need is financial support to actually buy chickens. How can I benefit from your programs?
This is high time poultry farmers got organised into Cooperaatives for their recognition but also to be well supported.
Currently these farmers are just working together in whatsapp groups supporting each other on Poultry Management and marketing issues which at a certain point hit a nag. I am part of at least four: Mzuzu Poultry Group, Mzimba Poultry Group, Poultry Union (unregistered though), United Poultry Farmer. I left another one solely for local chicken farmers which was in the process of registering as a cooperative.
Potential is very high in the poultry sector but organisation. There is need to compete with large scale businesses in the country which have claimed most corners. The new poultry breeds: kuroiler, sasso, boshveld are more palatable and yield more meat than mikolongwe and the broilers full of chemicals.
The project is a powerful move that can benefit Malawi.
On behalf of CASA Malawi:
Dear Emmanuel
This is a good observation and we agree that there is a need for poultry producers to get organized and access necessary support.
CASA has partnered with the Small and Medium Poultry Farmers Association (SMPFA. One of the key activities will be to set up regional demonstration poultry farms, provide training and link its members to various business opportunities. The groupings mentioned could be linked to SMPFA. In addition, CASA is also working with a poultry SME in Mzuzu which intends to work with small and medium poultry farmers. This can also be an opportunity for the groupings that you have mentioned to be linked to SMEs as offtakers. We are looking forward to getting in touch with you for more information.
Warm regards,
Rollins from CASA Malawi