FANRPAN to leads agriculture policy dialogue

Food Agriculture Natural Resources Pan African Network (FANRPAN) alongside with the Civil Society Agriculture Network (CISANET) will lead a three-day conference of regional agriculture policy dialogue slated from the 6th to 9th of August 2024, where the minister of agriculture Hon. Dalitso Kawale will expect to preside over the dialogue.

In his sentiment in a press conference in Lilongwe on Friday FANRPAN director of business development, Francis Hale said they learned a lot from this country in terms of policies that have been crafted and are on the books but they are expected to be implemented.

Hale stated that the whole region is experiencing several challenges due to El-Nino- Nino which has a lot in Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe which resulted in the insecurity of food and nutrition hence does not mean that the policies that are being implemented are positive.

He further revealed that Malawi’s needs to be picked and uploaded which will be taken across the region as it was in 2008 when the Fertilizer Subsidy Programme (FISP) was taken by Zambia and Zimbabwe which brought impacted the livelihoods of their smallholder farmers after learning from this country.

He added that agriculture biotechnology is the only way to curb the effect of climate change in the region and there is a need to take it into consideration.

In his sentiment principal secretary responsible for Irrigation in the Ministry of Agriculture Geoffrey Mamba said the dialogue will advantage to the stakeholders to look at the policies the government is bringing up.

Mamba further said they are implementing several programs that this country has good security like the Affordable Input Programme (AIP), promoting substance farming to commercial, and introducing of mega-farms agricultural productivity a, and commercialization as in line with Vision 2063.

OnInis remarks, National Planning Commission (NPC) director for policy and communication Dr Andrew Jamali said Malawi implementing a set of programs pillar one of the agenda 2063 which is agriculture productivity and commercialization say it needed to push through the food system and food season in the transformation space.

FANRPAN conducted the same dialogue in 2008 during the late Bingu Wa MuMutharikaegime which transformed Malawi’s agriculture through the introduction of FISP.