Malawi farmers’ to access K48 million piggery, poultry loans
Some poor farmers in the central and northern Malawi could have life-transforming experiences soon, if their applications to access a K48 million loan facility, to start rearing pigs and chickens, get approved.
The Small Scale Livestock and Livelihood Programmes (SSLLP), in collaboration with an American firm known as KIVA, is providing the rare opportunity for the livestock loans as a way of empowering the rural poor farmers to generate more income by exploring business chances in agriculture.
“What we will actually be providing the successful farmers will be pig or chicken complements equivalent to the loans ranges applied for,” Charles Sute Mwakasungula, SSLLP Executive Director told The Nation.
“The loans range from K192,000 to K480,000, to be payable in 18 months,” he added.
Mwakasungula says the loans will be at an interest rate of 10 percent.
He explained that the applicants need to mobilise themselves into clusters of 20 people in a given area and should also be willing to construct sturdy pens, some of whose construction materials, like bags of cement, will comprise part of the loan.
“For easy management of this loan, SSLLP is asking reputable NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisations, CBOs (Community-Based Organisations) and government departments that have components of livelihoods through livestock to submit requests to us on behalf of their farmers,” Mwakasungula added.
Farmers in the Central Region districts of Ntchisi, Nkhotakota and Kasungu and the Northern Region districts of Mzimba, Nkhata Bay, Rumphi and Karonga will be consired for the loans.
SSLLP has focused on the seven districts because it already has its resident extension staff who will easily provide animal husbandry crash courses and monitor the business enterprise thereafter, he added.
“We are very grateful to KIVA for giving us the US$100,000 (K48 million) livestock loan facility. So far, one cluster of farmers has benefited in Lilongwe District and things are going on extremely well, as 52 pigs have been distributed there. This is why we want to extend the opportunity to needy farmers in the other districts and we hope KIVA will consider increasing the loan facility in the near future, as the demand is high.” explains Mwakasungula.
Meanwhile, it is all smiles for 54-year-old Patrick Mangani and his wife, Margaret, as they are proud owners of three pigs in their Kadewere Village, some 25 kilometres west of Lilongwe City, having benefited from the SSLLP loan facility from October last year.
A father of five elderly children, Mangani admits that life has been a great struggle for him and his family. “We made ends meet by engaging in ganyu (piece-work) and the hand-to-mouth life made us laughing stocks in this community,” he stated this week.
But he declared that when he accessed the K220,000 SSLLP piggery loan nearly four months ago, he knew that he could not only repay the loan easily but also that he would soon be a leading pig farmer in the area.
“Already, many people have noted that I am no longer begging them for ganyu but that I am focusing on looking after my three prized pigs, which will make significant income for me once they start multiplying. Those same people who used to ridicule me now respect me and wonder how and when I acquired the expertise in looking after my pigs,” Mangani enthused.
‘Thanks to this project (SSLLP), there is greater joy in my family now and we are all helping one another in making sure that this business opportunity makes us star performers in this community,” he declared.
