Platform for African – European Partnership in Agricultural Research for Development

Friday, April 26, 2013

Malawi’s Legume Platform

Malawi’s Legume Platform has been formed to strengthen national multi-stakeholder partnerships within the legumes sector. Legume crops are especially important in Malawi because of their potential to both improve soil fertility (by fixing nitrogen and reducing erosion) and help to overcome nutritional deficiencies (supplying protein, oils and vitamin A).

The Legumes platform is a public private partnership currently working with four of the most important legumes of Malawi, namely Beans, Soya, Pigeon peas and groundnuts. The platform has been created with the aim of contributing to the development and expansion of an efficient and viable Legumes sector in Malawi using the value chain approach. Membership is welcome to all legumes value chain players in Malawi. The platform is aimed at coordinating all players for the development of the legumes sector in Malawi. The Platform is subdivided into 4 key Thematic areas across all legume as follows;
  1. Production: this thematic group looks into seed availability and access issues, production, research and post harvest management issues. This group is chaired by ICRISAT. Since 2008, ICRISAT has been running the Malawi Seed Industry Development Project (supported by Irish Aid) to improve legume seed production and multiplication, with the aim of increasing food security and household income among poor farmers in Malawi.
  2. Market development: this thematic group looks into legumes market environment, product development and policy environment
  3. Processing and Value addition: this thematic group looks at issues of quality, processing, standards and regulations
  4. Institutional Development: this thematic group focuses on issues of Institutional support and capacity building, and information and technology transfer
Further references:
Background documents, case studies and resources for the Hunger · Nutrition · Climate Justice Conference which took place in Dublin Castle on April 15th/16th 2013. Three cases concern Malawi:

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