By Aliko Munde

Chitipa, October 31, Mana: Billions of Malawi Kwacha have been invested in Chitipa District in various developmental projects. However, when the projects phase out, oftentimes, issues of sustainability become a bottleneck in the district and country as a whole.

One such organization that has invested heavily in the district and Malawi at large since 1982 is World Vision Malawi (MVM).

The organization has made significant investment in infrastructure and made contributions in different sectors mainly; education, livelihood and resilience, maternal and child health, and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH).

Despite these investments, the organization still lacks a comprehensive database that shows the type, number, location and state of infrastructures constructed or initiated by WVM because of lack of ownership among community members.

But at Lufita Trading Centre in Senior Chief Mwabulambya in the district, the story is different.

In 2008 World Vision under Namatubi Kanyenjere Area Programme procured a sunflower processing machine, which was donated to Witimba Kaseye Cooperative. And the 114-member cooperative is still up and running.

“Governance structures we have in our cooperative have assisted us to reach where we are today,” explains Andrew Mtambo, Chairperson for the cooperative.

He said: “We have an executive committee, sub committees and board. These are the structures that this cooperative has been rooted in.”

The cooperative, which started as an association in 2003, is into agribusiness and has acquired many assets from the cooking oil processing business.

Mtambo says the cooperative has managed to build a business shop at Lufita Trading Centre, poultry house and bought a piece of land at Ilema Trading Centre which they plan to build a business shop in near future.

"We have a warehouse which we built and World Vision assisted us with iron sheets. We also built a structure which we turned into a sunflower cooking oil processing mini-factory," he explains.

Fiskani Bakali, Chairperson for procurement Sub Committee says apart from processing cooking oil from sunflowers, they also aim to reduce vending of farm produce in their area.

Bakali says most farmers in their area have been duped by vendors by buying from farmers at lower than the farm gate price.

“We are here to help reverse that and our vision is to add value to all the farm produce we collect from our members even from non-members,” Bakali narrates.

"We have plans to buy a bigger sunflower cooking oil pressing machine because the one we currently have produces 100 litres of cooking oil a day. So we have overwhelming demand for our product and also non-members who come to process their sunflower. That is why we need machines with higher volume," she adds.

Bakali further says they also plan to start adding value to maize into maize flour so that maize in Chitipa is not exported to other countries adding that they also plan to add value to soybeans and groundnuts.

“We need approximately K500 million to fulfil our dream of adding value to all our farm produce,” she says.

On funding grants, Bakali says twice they applied to AGCOM and they were not successful. She says reasons given from AGCOM are not satisfactory on their applications being rejected.

A 2013 study by Costa Hofisi and Martha Chizima titled; “The Sustainability of Donor Funded Projects in Malawi” states that if sustainability is to be achieved in donor funded projects it is important that the design of all development intervention in smallholder communities articulate how they would work with and/or build capacities of local governance and service structures that ensure effective delivery and sustainability of project benefits.

To achieve this, the report says, working in partnerships and/or collaboration with local authorities is not an option but a must in rural community development interventions.

Programmes Manager for World Vision Malawi (WVM) for Karonga and Chitipa Districts, Hendrix Kalanje says it remains a challenge to see projects being sustained after donor withdrawal.

Kalanje says seeing the cooperative still running, 14 years after World Vision transitioned, is not only very encouraging but also motivating to the organization.

“The ability of project recipients to continue operating their projects after World Vision transitioned gives us the confidence that the community and local partners were actively involved in the development of the programme vision and priorities leading to the ownership of the interventions that World Vision implemented in the area. It also implies that community partners value the cooperative,” Kalanje says.

He says as an organization, they see that the sustainability drivers that were integrated and mainstreamed in their programme interventions were effective.

Kalanje adds that the programme beneficiaries were actively involved in the decision-making processes of the programme design, planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation stages, leading to ownership of the interventions.

“It is clear that the community members understood their vision and aspirations and were steadfast in working with World Vision as a partner in addressing developmental challenges that impeded the realization of their vision. Asset based development is a good option because it improves what is already existing rather than introducing new ones,” he explains.

Kalanje discloses that in many of the area programmes World Vision has worked, sustaining project interventions has been a challenge saying that the organization sees pockets of communities that have been able to sustain interventions.

The experience points to the fact that in many cases, projects only thrive during the presence of funder organisations and benefactors. Soon after the involved organisations leave, projects crumble.

Kalanje says community ownership through volunteerism and participation is a fundamental aspect that pushes donor-funded projects to achieve sustainability. He further says in many cases, there is lack of community ownership of project interventions, which compromises sustainability.

“At the onset, organisations should be able to engage community partners effectively throughout the programme life, provide asset-based capacity building to the community structures for sustainability. Organisations should also invest in mapping potential local partners and enhancing their capacities in readiness for the transition period,” Kalanje says.