Zomba, February 12, 2009 - Speaker of the Malawi National Assembly, Right Honourable Louis Chimango and an entourage of chairpersons of different parliamentary committees visited UNDP’s Mwandama Millennium Village in Zomba to see how the interventions of the project have impacted on the lives of the people of the area.

“I first learnt of the Millennium Villages Project on the internet and I made it a point to come because I did not believe such an integrated fight against poverty is happening in this country,” Chimango said at Linjidzi Primary School where, apart from constructing school blocks, UNDP is also conducting a school feeding programme for the pupils.

During a stop at the school the speaker learnt that the school feeding programme is sustained by the communities in the village who donate three bags of maize to the community grain bank part of which is used to produce flour to support the programme.

“We provide the farming families with three bags of two 50 kilogram’s bags of fertilizer and 10 kilograms of hybrid maize seed to be used for cultivation in their farms. After they harvest, each farming family contributes three bags of maize to the community grain bank. Some of this maize is used for the school feeding programme,” Rebbie Harawa, Team Leader for the project told Chimango while he witnessed standard one pupils receiving morning porridge a few metres away from their classrooms.

In an interview, one of the teachers at the school, Victor Magombo said the school feeding programme has improved the education standards in the area because apart from a decrease in the school drop-out, pupils come early to school knowing they will break off for a meal.

He said parents have received the programme so well that the responsibility of preparing the porridge for the pupils rotates by village where three volunteers from each village help with the preparation of the food for a week. 

The speaker then visited an area the community has dedicated to growing of indigenous trees in an attempt to rehabilitate the environment in the area. Though the people are surrounded by estates and have small pieces of land for subsistence farming, they saw it necessary to put aside a piece of land to raise trees.

MVP’s Agricultural Coordinator Phelire Nkhoma said the farmers have also adopted the practice of agro forestry where they are planting nitrogen fixing trees in their gardens together with their maize crop.

Probably the highlight of the tour it was the visit to the community grain bank where the villages under the project store over 700 metric tons worth over MK40 million from last year’s harvest. The visitors found people lined up waiting to buy the maize for use in their households.

The grain bank was a highlight because the months from October to March are lean times in Malawi. During this time households have depleted their grain reserves and sorely depend on Agriculture Development and Marketing Corporation (ADMARC) a government parastatal charged with the responsibility of buying and selling grain in the country.

“Because of pressure of demand, sometimes ADMARC has no supplies of the grain and these people turn to the grain bank where they access maize at a price the community all agreed,” explained MVP’s Collins Namathanga, adding that the maize comes from the community as their contribution after benefitting from the farm input subsidy programme.
 
Addressing the people who gathered at Mwandama Ground after the visit, the speaker said he was awestruck by the achievement of the Millennium Villages Project which, he said, is on course in the fight against poverty.

“I have travelled to over seventy countries in the world in pursuit of answers to poverty but I did not know that the answer is right here in Malawi in the name of the Millennium Villages Project,” Chimango said.

He said the agricultural interventions and the grain bank have clearly demonstrated that it is possible to fight hunger at community level in the country if the activities of the Millennium Villages are scaled and replicated all over the country.

He said the Malawi Parliament wants to be counted in the fight against poverty by raising the profile of projects and activities that Member of Parliament can learn from and introduce in their areas to assist fight poverty in Malawi.

Chimango then commended UNDP and its cooperating partners for the Millennium Villages Project and other projects that are supporting government of Malawi mitigate the impact of abject poverty among its people.

Speakers Visit to Mwandama Village in Photos.