By Salome Gangire

Neno, October 14, Mana: President Dr Lazarus Chakwera on Monday launched the Affordable Inputs Programme (AIP) for the 2024/2025 farming season in Neno District with a call to beneficiaries of various social protection interventions to utilise the initiatives with prudence.

Speaking at Dzundu Primary School in the area of Traditional Authority (TA) Symon, Chakwera said this year’s programme targets small holder farmers who have land and are productive.

He reiterated his administration’s commitment to ensure Malawians are food secure by supporting them with affordable inputs; hence, the continuation of the programme.

“In the past the programme was targeting people randomly and was not achieving its purpose as some of the people that were benefiting had no land and were selling the farm inputs,” he said.

He said the programme will from now onwards be targeting productive small holder farmers who have labour and can produce more food.

Chakwera said those without labour and land will be incorporated in other government safety nets according to their abilities and those not benefiting from AIP will benefit in other programmes.

He said government is aware that some Malawians are facing hunger as they did not harvest enough food due to the dry spell induced by climate change.

“No one should cheat you that Chakwera will not help you. Government will help you as some have benefited from AIP, others are benefiting from Social Cash Transfer and NEEF loans,” he said.

He, therefore, asked Malawians to love one another and not be greedy by benefiting from multiple programmes but give a chance to others to also benefit. 

Minister of Agriculture, Sam Kawale, said everything is in place for this year’s AIP, as the ministry has contracted 77 transporters to ferry the inputs to different selling points across the country.

Kawale said each constituency will have two selling points with each having mobile satellite depots across the constituency.

“On network, we are working with ESCOM to make sure fibre is working properly so that the programme doesn’t face challenges in its implementation,” Kawale said.

He said government through other partners has mobilised over K1 trillion for agricultural development to ensure the country achieves the Malawi 2063 of having productive and commercially driven agriculture sector.

Kawale said government is taking AIP as a first step towards mega farms where they expect a person who has received two bags to multiply it using Mbeya manure so that they transition from AIP to mega farms.

A total of 1,048,445 productive farmers nationwide are expected to benefit from AIP in the 2024/2025 season with each benefiting with farming inputs of 50 kilogrammes of UREA and CAN of which 6,500 farmers are benefiting with livestock (goats).