By Yamikani Sabola
Mzuzu, January 29, Mana: Executive Director for National Youth Council of Malawi (NYCOM), Rex Chapota, has asked youth cooperatives in the country to invest more in value addition of both crop and livestock value chains to boost their earnings and create jobs for more youths.
Chapota was speaking in Mzuzu on Wednesday after presenting a K6 million grant to Wamaka Youth Farmers’ Cooperative which deals in fisheries.
He said apart from increasing income, investing in value addition across all agriculture sub sectors is a more effective and efficient way of curbing post harvest losses mostly experienced by smallholder farmers.
“I am encouraged that Wamaka youths are looking at value addition as a key vision for their enterprise. This is very important because what will happen is that they will get more income than when they are selling the raw product.
“They want to have their fish tinned so that it can be sold in major chain stores and even exported to other countries. This is a unique scenario we are seeing from Wamaka cooperative. I urge other youth cooperatives to adopt value addition,” Chapota said.
Wamaka Youth Cooperative is one of the 18 youth cooperatives nationwide which has benefited from NYCOM grants totaling K100 million to empower them economically and enable them do productive entrepreneurship.
Executive Director for Wamaka Youth Farmers’ Cooperative, Francis Chirambo, thanked NYCOM for the grant, saying it will help them increase production and earnings.
“Previously we have been rearing fish from our six ponds which could make us produce about one and half metric tons of fish. For now, with grants from NYCOM, we are going to increase the number of fish ponds to 12 and increase our production to seven metric tons,” he said.
Chairperson for Parliamentary Committee on Social and Community Affairs, Savelo Kafwafwa, said his committee will lobby parliament to increase NYCOM’s grants allocation so that the Council reaches out to more youth cooperatives.
Kafwafwa noted that 121 youth cooperatives had applied for the grants. However, only 18 were successful because the K100 million, which NYCOM was allocated was not adequate.
