Malawi’s Public Service Broadcaster (MBC) has vowed to continue pursuing revenues from advertisers rather than depend on state funding. The MBC says it must try to ensure its own survival after Parliament refused to fund it for the second year in a row. The legislators accuse it of bias in its coverage of important political issues. MBC officials deny the allegations.From Blantyre, VOA reporter Lameck Masina has the story.
Malawi’s parliament, dominated by the opposition, allocated a symbolic one cent each to the MBC and the country’s TV station, Malawi Television. With that, it met its responsibilities under the law that prohibits the Parliament from denying all financial support without holding a vote.
As for the broadcasters, the law allows only limited advertising and focuses on what it calls the “social responsibility” required of MBC, the only broadcaster that receives public funding.
Bright Malopa is the deputy director of the network. He says without the government subventions, or subsidies, the station will need to meet its operating expenses by increasing competition with private stations for advertisers.
"We do carry out a lot of programs," he says, "and a lot of them were being produced on the strength of money that we were getting through subventions. Now that we don’t have those subventions it means that somebody has to sponsor. This has forced us into a position where we have to put our commercial interest first in the process ignoring our social responsibilities.”
Malopa says this will lead put the large and better-established state broadcaster in direct competition with small private stations that depend on advertising funds.
"My only worry," he says, "is that if the situation continues like that, we may be seeing the situation where MBC will be the only dominant force because other radio stations are going to close down."
Malopa says MBC tries to provide balanced news but has trouble getting the opposition’s viewpoint because most opposition politicians refuse to be interviewed by its journalists.
For example, he says, the chairperson of the Business Committee of Parliament, Atupele Muluzi, also a parliamentarian for the opposition United Democratic Front, refused to talk to an MBC journalist.
The reporter was seeking Muluzi’s comment on allegations that he wrote the World Bank asking it to stop funding the Malawi government because of what he called financial mismanagement by government officials.
The opposition politicians accuse MBC of twisting information to suit the interests of the ruling party – a charge the MBC denies.
In August a meeting involving Ministry of Information, the Media Committee of Parliament and a local media watchdog, the Media Council of Malawi aimed to end the standoff between the broadcasters and the opposition politicians.
They ordered MBC to stop airing programs targeting opposition leaders like Makiyolobasi, Mizwanya, and Mpungwepungwe Pa Ndale.
But MBC says it is now considering bringing the programs back especially those that were assisting the corporation in revenue collection. Since last year MBC has been selling compact discs and cassettes as one way of boosting its revenue.
Patricia Kaliati is Malawi’s minister of information. She says she supports the move.
“If you (MBC) are raising funds from that program, please go ahead," she told the press. "I have got no problem with that, provided it is to the needs of the people.”
In its recent newscasts MBC has been airing views of people demanding the return of the suspended programs. But political analysts say that would increase the acrimony between the opposition and government politicians.
The Media Council of Malawi says the withholding of funding to the broadcasters is not only a violation of freedom of expression but also untimely, as the country prepares for the 2009 presidential and parliamentary elections.
It says the parliamentarians should have found other ways of encouraging balance and impartial coverage rather than trying to cripple MBC’s operations.
In 2006, Parliament approved only half of the annual subventions to the broadcasters.
Monday, 6 October 2008
New school block to change lives of pupils in Malawi
From a distance, Miteme Junior Primary School looks like a marketplace with vendors in school uniform. On close inspection, one realizes this is a school without a single classroom. Classes one to five are all held under trees; only class five has desks.
As the school has four teachers to cover five classes, one class is always left to roam about aimlessly. Efforts to enforce discipline to ensure that the pupils sit quietly under a tree do not seem to work, and the head teacher has given up.
“The environment is not conducive,” says headmaster Widow Mazengera. “Most pupils would rather just stay at home than come here and sit on the floor.”
Shutdown in rainy season
The Miteme school is located in the plains of Lilongwe, where most families earn a living from farming and would rather have the children help on the farm than go to school.
Although the school has over 520 registered pupils, the daily average attendance is just over 100. In the rainy season, school shuts down for at least three months until it’s dry again.
“During this period, we lose a lot of pupils. Most drop out and do not return to school. Or when they do, it’s not to learn but to play with their friends,” the headmaster complains.
The school does not have a single water point. Children have to go back home for a drink of water. Of course, most just leave for the day.
Schools for Africa improves quality
There is hope at the end of the tunnel, though. Under the Schools for Africa Initiative, UNICEF plans to build a school block and some toilets for the young students here.
“The idea is to make this school child-friendly so that children can be motivated to stay in school,” explains UNICEF Malawi Education Specialist Catherine Chirwa.
The child-friendly school (CFS) model is a framework to achieve quality in education in an integrated and holistic manner. It aims to translate the rights enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child into classroom practice and school management.
Right to education
To achieve this, the CFS model promotes quality education; encourages the provision of healthy and protective environments for learning; and provides a safe environment for children who are orphaned and made vulnerable by poverty, violence, and HIV and AIDS.
Quality education for all children is a major priority for UNICEF. To help countries get onto the right path, UNICEF will launch the ‘Child-Friendly School Manual’ this year. The manual is a practical guide book that will help countries design and implement child-friendly schools that are most appropriate to their circumstances.
Once Miteme becomes a child-friendly school, UNICEF hopes pupils from Khonthi village will finally enjoy their right to a quality education.
Malawi’s urbanisation set at 5.2 percent annually
Malawi is one of the fastest urbanised countries in Africa, with an urbanisation rate of 5.2 percent per annum, UN Habitat Programme Director for Malawi, John Chome, said here Monday.
In addition, the country is fifth in Africa after Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Burundi and Eritrea, Chome said.
Speaking during the commemoration of World Habitat Day in the capital Lilongwe on Monday, he said the implication of this trend is that Malawi will soon face scarcity of basic services including land, housing, water, electricity, food and jobs, among others.
"Government and its stakeholders need to urgently come in to provide an urban population with basic services by investing in rural areas to reduce urban migration and also to give the urban population the basic needs," he said.
He said 70 percent of Malawians living in urban areas are underserved with the basic necessities from the government, thereby slowly forcing them to live in poor conditions accompanied by high levels of poverty.
Deputy Minister of Transport, Public Works and Housing Roy Comsy said his government had lined up a number of strategies in order to provide the urban population with the basic services, and at the same time, reduce migration to urban areas.
In addition, he said, his ministry had formulated a National Housing Plan to provide land, plots and housing to urban population.
He added that government, with the funding from various donors, was implementing a Rural Growth Centres project in selected districts of the country where infrastructure and integrated services will be provided to reduce urban migration.
In addition, the country is fifth in Africa after Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Burundi and Eritrea, Chome said.
Speaking during the commemoration of World Habitat Day in the capital Lilongwe on Monday, he said the implication of this trend is that Malawi will soon face scarcity of basic services including land, housing, water, electricity, food and jobs, among others.
"Government and its stakeholders need to urgently come in to provide an urban population with basic services by investing in rural areas to reduce urban migration and also to give the urban population the basic needs," he said.
He said 70 percent of Malawians living in urban areas are underserved with the basic necessities from the government, thereby slowly forcing them to live in poor conditions accompanied by high levels of poverty.
Deputy Minister of Transport, Public Works and Housing Roy Comsy said his government had lined up a number of strategies in order to provide the urban population with the basic services, and at the same time, reduce migration to urban areas.
In addition, he said, his ministry had formulated a National Housing Plan to provide land, plots and housing to urban population.
He added that government, with the funding from various donors, was implementing a Rural Growth Centres project in selected districts of the country where infrastructure and integrated services will be provided to reduce urban migration.
Samsung donates cameras to Malawi electoral body
The Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) chairperson Anastasia Msosa announced on Monday that her body had received a donation of over 700 state-of-the-art digital cameras from Samsung, the South Korean electronic international giant, to use in its exercise to registers voters for the 19 May 2009 presidential and parliamentary polls.
Speaking to journalists in the commercial city of Blantyre, she said the cameras had come at the right time when the body was in greater need for the equipment.
"The cameras will assist in the on-going voter registration exercise which was temporarily suspended due to limited equipment, including cameras," she said, adding that the cameras have already been distributed to centres where the exercise was suspended and would resume this week.
The body suspended the voter registration exercise last week in some areas due to shortage of cameras, whose photographs are pasted on voters’ registration cards.
Speaking to journalists in the commercial city of Blantyre, she said the cameras had come at the right time when the body was in greater need for the equipment.
"The cameras will assist in the on-going voter registration exercise which was temporarily suspended due to limited equipment, including cameras," she said, adding that the cameras have already been distributed to centres where the exercise was suspended and would resume this week.
The body suspended the voter registration exercise last week in some areas due to shortage of cameras, whose photographs are pasted on voters’ registration cards.
MALAWI: Green belts to boost food production
Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika has pledged to embark on a "green belt" programme to enable the country, in the long run, to say goodbye to hunger and international food aid.
"Malawi appeals to the G-8 countries to support us to create a green belt around our lakes and along our rivers to irrigate land up to 20 kilometres from the shores. The Malawi government plans to grow a lot of rice, wheat, maize, millet, cassava, potatoes and beans for the local and international market," he told the United Nations General Assembly recently.
Mutharika, who is also Malawi's minister of agriculture and food security, has been applauded for using a subsidy programme for fertiliser and seed to boost local production. In 2005/06 the full US $50 million price tag was met by the government as donors sat on the sidelines.
"The green belts, if implemented, would help us harvest crops all year round, thereby curbing any food shortages that haunted the country in the past. We have been blessed with abundant water resources, which can be used to make the green belts programme work," Mutharika told reporters in the capital, Lilongwe, last month.
The green belts would stretch from Karonga, a town in the extreme north, near the border with Tanzania, to Nsanje, a town on the Shire River on the southern border with Mozambique.
Up to 90 percent of cultivated crops are rain-fed, but Malawi had numerous irrigation schemes along Lake Malawi and the Shire Valley. Many ground to a halt when the dictatorship of Hastings Kamazu Banda collapsed in 1994, partly because they were linked to his former ruling Malawi Congress Party's paramilitary wing, the Malawi Young Pioneers.
The new green belts initiative is likely to cover some of these irrigation programmes, most of which are either lying idle or underutilised. The government will also assist smallholder farmers establish their own irrigation schemes along Lake Malawi - Africa's second largest lake - to grow rice and maize.
Need for commitment
Billy Banda, executive director of Malawi Watch, a social justice advocacy group, said the green belt idea was long overdue. Because of low output on insufficient land, over a third of farmers cannot produce enough and have to sell their labour for part of the year to buy food on the market.
"There has to be political will to make this dream come into reality. Secondly, all Malawians should support the initiative without necessarily looking for outside intervention, because as a country we have all the resources to implement this ambitious initiative," Banda said.
A report by Christian Aid, an international non-governmental organisation, Fighting Food Shortages, Hungry for Change, cited failure by past governments to invest in small-scale irrigation as one of the reasons some families in Malawi face hunger.
"Climate change may be adding to people's food insecurity: long dry spells in the middle of the growing season are becoming common; floods at the same time of year destroy crops, but the biggest problem is the failure by government to tackle root causes of the farmers' problems," the report noted. For instance, policy continued to focus on maize even though this crop is extremely sensitive to water shortages.
Government has since acknowledged the risk of a major food crisis by considering the purchase of weather derivatives – a financial instrument backed by the World Bank - which means that if the country's rainfall dips below a certain level then it will get a pay-out.
"Malawi appeals to the G-8 countries to support us to create a green belt around our lakes and along our rivers to irrigate land up to 20 kilometres from the shores. The Malawi government plans to grow a lot of rice, wheat, maize, millet, cassava, potatoes and beans for the local and international market," he told the United Nations General Assembly recently.
Mutharika, who is also Malawi's minister of agriculture and food security, has been applauded for using a subsidy programme for fertiliser and seed to boost local production. In 2005/06 the full US $50 million price tag was met by the government as donors sat on the sidelines.
"The green belts, if implemented, would help us harvest crops all year round, thereby curbing any food shortages that haunted the country in the past. We have been blessed with abundant water resources, which can be used to make the green belts programme work," Mutharika told reporters in the capital, Lilongwe, last month.
The green belts would stretch from Karonga, a town in the extreme north, near the border with Tanzania, to Nsanje, a town on the Shire River on the southern border with Mozambique.
Up to 90 percent of cultivated crops are rain-fed, but Malawi had numerous irrigation schemes along Lake Malawi and the Shire Valley. Many ground to a halt when the dictatorship of Hastings Kamazu Banda collapsed in 1994, partly because they were linked to his former ruling Malawi Congress Party's paramilitary wing, the Malawi Young Pioneers.
The new green belts initiative is likely to cover some of these irrigation programmes, most of which are either lying idle or underutilised. The government will also assist smallholder farmers establish their own irrigation schemes along Lake Malawi - Africa's second largest lake - to grow rice and maize.
Need for commitment
Billy Banda, executive director of Malawi Watch, a social justice advocacy group, said the green belt idea was long overdue. Because of low output on insufficient land, over a third of farmers cannot produce enough and have to sell their labour for part of the year to buy food on the market.
"There has to be political will to make this dream come into reality. Secondly, all Malawians should support the initiative without necessarily looking for outside intervention, because as a country we have all the resources to implement this ambitious initiative," Banda said.
A report by Christian Aid, an international non-governmental organisation, Fighting Food Shortages, Hungry for Change, cited failure by past governments to invest in small-scale irrigation as one of the reasons some families in Malawi face hunger.
"Climate change may be adding to people's food insecurity: long dry spells in the middle of the growing season are becoming common; floods at the same time of year destroy crops, but the biggest problem is the failure by government to tackle root causes of the farmers' problems," the report noted. For instance, policy continued to focus on maize even though this crop is extremely sensitive to water shortages.
Government has since acknowledged the risk of a major food crisis by considering the purchase of weather derivatives – a financial instrument backed by the World Bank - which means that if the country's rainfall dips below a certain level then it will get a pay-out.
Seeking Africa's green revolution
From the begging bowl to the bread basket: in just two years, Malawi has gone from famine to food surplus - a minor agricultural miracle.
By applying a mixture of crop breeding, soil management, irrigation and diversification, agro-science experts are helping subsistence farmers to cope with climate change and buck the trend in neighbouring African countries.
BBC science and environment reporter James Morgan has gone into the field to meet the families who are sowing the seeds of a uniquely African green revolution - one which is as kind to the environment as it is to the economy.
Sunday 5 October - sizing up the miracle of Malawi
"If [environmentalists] lived for just one month among the misery of the developing world, as I have for 50 years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertiliser and irrigation canals."
So said Norman Borlaug, one of the founding fathers of the original Green Revolution - credited with wiping out starvation in Asia.
But can technology really be the saviour of Africa's struggling farmers? It has become a terribly unfashionable opinion in the UK, where "green" campaigners are no longer content to denounce GM crop trials. They simply rip them up.
"Responsible biotechnology is not the enemy," said Borlaug. "Starvation is."
I have decided to take Norm up on his wager, by coming to Malawi to see for myself.
Because no matter how many UN reports I've ploughed through, grasping the root cause of the current "food crisis" in Africa is anything but straightforward.
And neither is my journey to Malawi - a sweaty overnight haul which takes me via Kenya, Zambia, and several re-runs of Indiana Jones films. But for heroic inspiration, I look instead to a speech by Kofi Annan, the new chairman of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (Agra) - a $200m, pan-African programme, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates and Rockefeller foundations.
"Let us generate a uniquely African Green revolution," says Annan, cutting a heroic pose on my crumpled transcript. "There is nothing more important than this."
It is difficult to argue. Over the last 50 years, African farmers have laboured in the heat, while countries like Mexico, India and the Philippines have undergone a green revolution - applying novel fertilisers and pesticides to churn out bumper harvests of new high-yield varieties of wheat and rice.
Empowering farmers
Meanwhile, Africa has been cultivating greater and greater poverty statistics.
Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world where per capita food production has steadily declined.
The harvests have been great, but still the food prices in Malawi are still rocketing
Malcolm Fleming
One third of Africans are malnourished. Soils are among the most depleted on Earth. Farmers do not have access to productive seed varieties and those that do have neither the knowledge nor the tools to reap the harvest. Slash and burn still reigns.
Climate change is forecasting ever more variable rainfalls, and more frequent droughts. Add in soaring fuel prices and the scourge of HIV/Aids, and the average African finds himself surrounded in the kind of perilous predicament which from which even Harrison Ford would struggle to escape.
But it is this very challenge that has drawn the world's crop scientists and agro-economists to Malawi. They hope to pioneer novel farming systems that propel Africa towards a new era of food security.
It has already been dubbed by members of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as "a greener revolution".
"Greener" because it works with ecosystems, not against them. A revolution that is "pro-poor and pro-environment", in the words of Mr Annan.
The talk around the conference tables is of "empowering" subsistence farmers to find their own, local solutions - farming techniques which are sustainable, affordable and tailored to local soils, markets and eating preferences.
Over the next week, I'll be taking a look at these projects first hand - catching fish in the desert, planting strange trees in the middle of maize crops.
I'm wondering how women and men, who have been sowing the same maize seeds for generations, really feel about the new hybrid varieties of seeds which are more nutritious, but also more hungry for expensive pesticide and fertiliser.
'Against the grain'
Most of all, I'm curious to find out whether the "miracle" we have read about here in Malawi is bona fide or illusory. Is the revolution underway, or a simple matter of better rainfall?
The facts are these. During the last decade, Malawi suffered six successive years of food shortage, culminating in 2005. One third of the population - 4.5million people - went hungry.
Step forward two years, and Malawi is exporting more than one million metric tonnes of maize, its staple crop.
The government, against the advice of the IMF and the World Bank, has handed out vouchers to 1.5m of the country's poorest farmers, enabling them to buy "inputs" - seeds, fertiliser and pesticides. Meanwhile, yields have mushroomed. Malawians are selling maize to Kenya and giving food aid to Zimbabwe.
The success was hailed last year with Oxfam's Malcolm Fleming describing to the BBC how Malawi was going against the grain of African agriculture.
So when I bump into Malcolm, a well-kent face in my native Scotland, on the flight to Lilongwe, I don't hesitate to offer a warm handshake of congratulations.
"I'm afraid that things have moved on since then," he sighs. "The harvests have been great, but still the food prices in Malawi are still rocketing."
Why? "That's the question," he continues. "The closer I look, the more complicated it becomes. But from what I gather, the maize is being sold abroad at greater prices, and that keeps the prices up in Malawi."
Malcolm is here doing research in the lead up to World Food Day on 16 October. Helping him to raise awareness is another familiar Scottish face, but I'm afraid I am sworn to secrecy. All will be revealed in due course.
"Rising food prices might not be much of a problem for me or you," says Mr Fleming, "but if you spend 80% of your household income on food, and then the price doubles..."
It is a welcome serving of realism pie to chew on as I step out of Lilongwe airport.
The pavements are covered in a blanket of purple blossom - it looks like a fairytale. And the boys cartwheeling down the red dirt roads seem full of beans. But the lumps in their bellies tell a different story.
Malawi reopens agriculture schools to foster food security
As part of his war against hunger in the country, Malawi President Bingu was Mutharika on Monday announced that he would reopen several educational institutions that once taught modern agriculture methods but were shut down by his predecessor Bakili Muluzi due to financial constraints between 1994 and 2004.
Mutharika, who has won praise from both local and international observers for his achievement of food security since he took power in 2004, said he would reopen the farm schools to consolidate a strong base for sustainable agriculture as a basis for the country’s development.
Malawi has been producing a bumper harvest of its staple food crop maize in the past three years, mainly by Mutharika\’s subsidising smallholder farmers with fertilisers and seeds.
As a result, some 400,000 metric tonnes of surplus maize was exported to Zimbabwe in 2007, while 10,000 metric tonnes was equally divided as a donation to Lesotho and Swaziland as Malawi\’s humanitarian gesture to the two drought-hit states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), formed in 1980 to economically empower the region.
Mutharika, who has won praise from both local and international observers for his achievement of food security since he took power in 2004, said he would reopen the farm schools to consolidate a strong base for sustainable agriculture as a basis for the country’s development.
Malawi has been producing a bumper harvest of its staple food crop maize in the past three years, mainly by Mutharika\’s subsidising smallholder farmers with fertilisers and seeds.
As a result, some 400,000 metric tonnes of surplus maize was exported to Zimbabwe in 2007, while 10,000 metric tonnes was equally divided as a donation to Lesotho and Swaziland as Malawi\’s humanitarian gesture to the two drought-hit states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), formed in 1980 to economically empower the region.
Africa: 'Subsidies Will Solve Africa's Food Crisis'
As the food situation in Africa becomes critical, the continent's governments have been asked to immediately start giving farming subsidies to overcome a crisis that could condemn millions of people to starvation.
Akinwumi Adesina, who heads the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (Agra) office in Nairobi, told The EastAfrican last week that no country ever achieved food security without farm subsidies.
He criticised the West, which he says subsidises its farmers while asking governments in the developing world to abandon theirs.
Governments in the EU and the US spend an estimated $237 billion on agricultural subsidies yet advise Africa not to support its farmers, Dr Adesina said.
He added that the only difference between a farmer in Europe and his counterpart in Africa is government support.
The issue of farm subsidies remains emotive and is said to be at the centre of the failed World Trade Organisation talks.
According to Dr Adesina, the time has come for Africa to say "No" to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund imposed programmes, which he said are to blame for the failure by African farmers to even feed themselves.
Dr Adesina said that in his more than 20 years of involvement in agricultural development, he has found that it is only in Africa that farmers get food aid simply because they cannot afford the inputs and technology required to increase farm productivity.
"Taking governments out of agriculture was a big mistake," Dr Adesina said, adding, "They must come back to provide the necessary support.
It is for this reason that Agra has started a farming subsidy programme that will see governments adopt farmer support programmes to supply inputs like fertilisers, seeds, machinery and markets with the objective of revolutionising agriculture in the next three years.
According to Dr Adesina, Malawi has shown the way by becoming the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to not only produce enough for its people but also a surplus for export -- and, in a continent not known for generosity, has supplied neighbouring Lesotho and Botswana with food aid.
Dr Adenisia said that Malawi's success resulted from the personal initiative of President Mbingu wa Mutharika, who defied the Bretton Woods institutions' no-subsidy policies and instituted what, three years down the line, has become a showcase of how Africa can quickly turn around its production.
When, in 2004, President Mutharika introduced the subsidy programme, Malawi, one of Africa's poorest nations, was a net importer of food, with millions of its people faced with starvation and malnutrition.
Over 90 per cent of the country's people relied, and still do, on agriculture and ordinarily, food stocks would run out within the first month of harvesting.
President Mutharika committed $50 million to help farmers acquire seeds and fertilisers and within the first year, the country produced 1.3 million tonnes of maize above the national requirement. Suddenly, the country was growing 3.6 million tonnes, more than double its food needs.
It immediately exported 160 million tonnes, donated 10,000 tonnes to Lesotho and Botswana and retained the rest for its strategic reserves.
Since then, there has been no turning back for the country's farmers, who this week will be hosting an international conference to showcase how Africa can escape the starvation trap. Malawi is today producing ten times what it did three years ago.
According to Dr Adesina, Kenya is better placed than Malawi to dramatically increase its agricultural production.
"Kenya enjoys two rainfall seasons while Malawi has only one, giving the country a natural advantage," he said, and added that the East African country is headed in the right direction with Agriculture Minister William Ruto championing a farmer support programme through commercial banks and the Agricultural Finance Corporation.
The farm subsidies involve creating a network of farmers, agro dealers, banks and the government.
An eligible farmer is given a voucher which he takes to agro dealers and collects inputs. The dealer presents the voucher to a participating bank, which in turn invoices the government. The farmer pays back after he has sold the produce.
Akinwumi Adesina, who heads the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (Agra) office in Nairobi, told The EastAfrican last week that no country ever achieved food security without farm subsidies.
He criticised the West, which he says subsidises its farmers while asking governments in the developing world to abandon theirs.
Governments in the EU and the US spend an estimated $237 billion on agricultural subsidies yet advise Africa not to support its farmers, Dr Adesina said.
He added that the only difference between a farmer in Europe and his counterpart in Africa is government support.
The issue of farm subsidies remains emotive and is said to be at the centre of the failed World Trade Organisation talks.
According to Dr Adesina, the time has come for Africa to say "No" to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund imposed programmes, which he said are to blame for the failure by African farmers to even feed themselves.
Dr Adesina said that in his more than 20 years of involvement in agricultural development, he has found that it is only in Africa that farmers get food aid simply because they cannot afford the inputs and technology required to increase farm productivity.
"Taking governments out of agriculture was a big mistake," Dr Adesina said, adding, "They must come back to provide the necessary support.
It is for this reason that Agra has started a farming subsidy programme that will see governments adopt farmer support programmes to supply inputs like fertilisers, seeds, machinery and markets with the objective of revolutionising agriculture in the next three years.
According to Dr Adesina, Malawi has shown the way by becoming the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to not only produce enough for its people but also a surplus for export -- and, in a continent not known for generosity, has supplied neighbouring Lesotho and Botswana with food aid.
Dr Adenisia said that Malawi's success resulted from the personal initiative of President Mbingu wa Mutharika, who defied the Bretton Woods institutions' no-subsidy policies and instituted what, three years down the line, has become a showcase of how Africa can quickly turn around its production.
When, in 2004, President Mutharika introduced the subsidy programme, Malawi, one of Africa's poorest nations, was a net importer of food, with millions of its people faced with starvation and malnutrition.
Over 90 per cent of the country's people relied, and still do, on agriculture and ordinarily, food stocks would run out within the first month of harvesting.
President Mutharika committed $50 million to help farmers acquire seeds and fertilisers and within the first year, the country produced 1.3 million tonnes of maize above the national requirement. Suddenly, the country was growing 3.6 million tonnes, more than double its food needs.
It immediately exported 160 million tonnes, donated 10,000 tonnes to Lesotho and Botswana and retained the rest for its strategic reserves.
Since then, there has been no turning back for the country's farmers, who this week will be hosting an international conference to showcase how Africa can escape the starvation trap. Malawi is today producing ten times what it did three years ago.
According to Dr Adesina, Kenya is better placed than Malawi to dramatically increase its agricultural production.
"Kenya enjoys two rainfall seasons while Malawi has only one, giving the country a natural advantage," he said, and added that the East African country is headed in the right direction with Agriculture Minister William Ruto championing a farmer support programme through commercial banks and the Agricultural Finance Corporation.
The farm subsidies involve creating a network of farmers, agro dealers, banks and the government.
An eligible farmer is given a voucher which he takes to agro dealers and collects inputs. The dealer presents the voucher to a participating bank, which in turn invoices the government. The farmer pays back after he has sold the produce.
Why honour deal that had come unstuck?
Gordon Brown and Jack McConnell have, at best, a distant relationship. Any notion that the Prime Minister offered Mr McConnell the post of High Commissioner to Malawi in recognition of the work he has done for that country is misplaced. The job was produced at the height of Mr Brown's powers to entice Mr McConnell away from the leadership of Scots Labour after the Holyrood election defeat last year.
The wisdom of removing Mr McConnell in order that he could be replaced by Wendy Alexander was found wanting. With Ms Alexander's leadership over, the Prime Minister was faced with honouring a deal designed to secure a political fix that had already come unstuck. Moreover, keeping his word meant the probability of another by-election defeat and all that would mean for his own political survival.
Add to that the argument from Ms Alexander's supporters that Mr McConnell failed to support her as she fought accusations of illegal donations and the temptation of backtracking on a promise to send Mr McConnell to Malawi was too great for the Prime Minister.
The new role of special envoy to the developing world is an important one. But that does not diminish the fact that this is a fix designed to sort another fix that went wrong. And in appointing Mr McConnell on a part-time basis Mr Brown is encouraging a system of politicians moonlighting, something which the Scottish Parliament has always discouraged.
Given his interests in the developing world Mr McConnell can be relied upon to do a good job but it is one that has been given for the wrong reasons and will be carried out in the wrong circumstances.
The wisdom of removing Mr McConnell in order that he could be replaced by Wendy Alexander was found wanting. With Ms Alexander's leadership over, the Prime Minister was faced with honouring a deal designed to secure a political fix that had already come unstuck. Moreover, keeping his word meant the probability of another by-election defeat and all that would mean for his own political survival.
Add to that the argument from Ms Alexander's supporters that Mr McConnell failed to support her as she fought accusations of illegal donations and the temptation of backtracking on a promise to send Mr McConnell to Malawi was too great for the Prime Minister.
The new role of special envoy to the developing world is an important one. But that does not diminish the fact that this is a fix designed to sort another fix that went wrong. And in appointing Mr McConnell on a part-time basis Mr Brown is encouraging a system of politicians moonlighting, something which the Scottish Parliament has always discouraged.
Given his interests in the developing world Mr McConnell can be relied upon to do a good job but it is one that has been given for the wrong reasons and will be carried out in the wrong circumstances.
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