Resilience Building Through Climate-Smart Agriculture in Malawi

Image: Romy Chevallier/Malawi
Image: Romy Chevallier/Malawi

Agriculture underpins Malawi’s economy but scaling climate-smart agriculture is hindered by limited financial resources, weak support services and high costs.

Summary:

  • Agriculture is the backbone of Malawi’s economy, sustaining the livelihoods of over 80% of the population.
  • Malawi’s reliance on rain-fed, smallholder farming renders it acutely vulnerable to climate variability. In recent decades, Malawi has faced increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather events, undermining agricultural productivity, deepening food and nutrition insecurity and exacerbating rural poverty.
  • Malawi is increasingly recognising climate-smart agriculture (CSA) as a key pathway to achieving sustainable food systems, reducing emissions and enhancing adaptive capacity.
  • Despite the numerous social, environmental and economic benefits of CSA, widespread adoption remains limited due to insecure land tenure, limited access to finance, poorly resourced extension services and high upfront investment costs, especially for smallholders.
  • Addressing these barriers is important to unlock the full potential of CSA, which requires a shift towards longer-term resilience investment, improved access to rural finance and the scaling-up of digital advisory services.

The views expressed in this publication/article are those of the author/s and do not necessarily reflect the views of the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA).