Key Messages:

The National Resilience Strategy (NRS) aims to build resilience against economic and environmental shocks, promoting inclusive growth, food security, and well-being for all Malawians.

Titukulane was designed to reduce the number of chronically food insecure households by enhancing the capacities of local and national governance structures to implement resilience-focused policies.

Background

Food insecurity is endemic in Malawi, affecting up to 38% of the population every year in the run-up to the harvest in April.

Global food, fuel, and fertilizer prices have risen rapidly in recent months, driven in large part by the fallout from the ongoing war in Ukraine and the sanctions imposed on Russia.

This report summarizes the baseline data that describe the rural population of five districts in Malawi targeted in the Scaling up Radio and ICTs for Enhanced Extension Delivery (SRIEED) II project that started in 2020 and ends in 2024.

Although geographically distant, there are multiple channels through which Russia’s invasion of Ukraine can affect the lives of Malawians.

This report provides a farm-level analysis of the effects of the COVID-19 crisis, 12–15 months in, using a nationally representative rural household survey conducted in June–July 2021. We draw three major observations from the survey.

Diversification is a common livelihood strategy for rural households in developing countries, with diversification being either a choice or necessity depending on individual household contexts.

This learning brief captures the experience of a large Resilience Food Security Activity, USAID – Titukulane, in responding to COVID-19 in Malawi.

Programs must tailor their interventions to fit the needs and contexts of program participants to achieve maximum success, even if those interventions are based on previously successful approaches and models.

Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Change (BRACC) is a five year program whose main objective is to strengthen the resilience of poor and vulnerable households to withstand current and future weather and climate-related shocks and stres

Several initiatives in Malawi have sought to strengthen the processes through which the design and content of policies, strategies, and programs in the agriculture sector that affect the nation’s food security are established.

New dataset from  2017/2018 survey of individuals’ opinions on quality of national agriculture & food security policy processes.

This is the fourth in a series of Key Facts sheets that IFPRI is producing based on the third and fourth Integrated Household Surveys (IHSs).

Malawi is extremely vulnerable to shocks and recurrent food crises (Barrett & Headey 2014). Malawi also suffers from persistently high levels of undernutrition (DHS 2016).

Social safety nets are designed to protect vulnerable households and individuals from the impact of economic shocks, natural disasters, and other crises. However, targeting of vulnerable households is difficult and therefore often ineffective.

Improving social assistance programs is imperative to addressing problems of poverty and vulnerability in Malawi. Emergency aid has played an important role in alleviating hunger during humanitarian crises such as those in 2015-16 and 2016-17.