Malawi eyes food investment boost

By Kingsley Jassi:

The national food systems investment symposium is set to line up agricultural value chain investment opportunities that have potential to transform the country’s food security and industrial base, the government has said.

The National Planning Commission (NPC), Ministry of Industrialisation, Business, Trade and Tourism and the Ministry of Agriculture Irrigation and Food Security—in collaboration with development partners—have organised the forum. The forum will be held in Lilongwe on Monday.

At a press briefing addressed ahead of the event yesterday, Principal Secretary for Industrialisation, Business, Trade and Tourism Wiskes Nkombezi said the forum would showcase investment opportunities across the agri-food systems value chain.

“It will also facilitate engagement among the government, investors, financial institutions and development partners to unlock investment and strengthen value chains,” he said.

Nkombezi said the ministry was working with stakeholders to improve the business and investment environment, promote value addition, facilitate investment and expand market opportunities for Malawian enterprises.

“We, will, therefore, be calling upon local and international investors, financial institutions and development partners to explore and invest in Malawi’s agri-food systems.

“The government is committed to working with investors to identify viable projects, address investment constraints and facilitate partnerships that are required to take projects from opportunity to implementation,” he said.

NPC Director General Fredrick Changaya said the country should move into turning its resource endowment into wealth that could drive out poverty and bring transformation.

However, he pleaded with stakeholders to take the forum as an opportunity to form a frontier that tackles bottlenecks to investments in agriculture value chains and address food security and industrial milestones.

“So, this is what we ask of Malawi’s private sector: on Monday, bring us your capital, discipline and hunger for maximum return.

We ask the government to bring the architecture, the policy and policy consistency, the assets for PPPs, the land, the roads, the trust within which that capital can safely grow,” he said.

The event is also being supported by development partners such as GIZ.

GIZ Country Director Inge Baumgarten said value chain development was key to addressing post-harvest losses as is the current case in the tomato industry.