State-owned National Youth Council of Malawi (NYCOM) has commended National Smallholder Farmers Association of Malawi (NASFAM) for the role it is playing in building national economic resilience and improving livelihoods of smallholder farmers through value addition.
NYCOM Programs Associate Zenani Mughogho made the remarks after leading a delegation of youths who went to inspect NASFAM Commercial, an agribusiness subsidiary of the association, in Lilongwe on Thursday.
The delegation was drawn from the youths who were attending the National Youth Summit at the Bingu International Convention Centre in Lilongwe.
Mughogho observed that NASFAM has made tremendous strides in transforming the agriculture sector, making it attractive it to the youth.
She said the innovations the association has invested are aligning well with the spirit of Youth Innovation Fund, which State President Dr. Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera launched on Wednesday.
“And as you can also see from the from the theme of the summit, harnessing innovation. So the the main aim for our visit to NASFAM, we wanted our youths to appreciate what the company is doing, so that the youths can also learn different things. We’re expecting our youth to not just walk away with nothing, but to take what they’ve learned here and put it into good use for their own good and the good of the nation,” she said.
One of the delegates to the National Youth Summit, Modester Nembwe, said the visit had helped in changing her perception towards farming.
The Kamuzu University of Health Sciences (KUHES) graduate observed that Malawi has been lagging behind in development because of the tendency by learned individuals to hunt for white-collar jobs
“This [visit] has sparked, you know, an excitement seeing that there are others doing it, and it has really made me, fired me more to what I’ve always wanted, that is manufacturing and try something new to contribute to Malawi’s economy. Because I feel like we’re lagging behind, because a lot of us are busy with things that a lot of people are doing on the ground, but we really need to do things that are different, like the way NASFAM is doing to add something into the economy so that we reduce our imports and we can start exporting as Malawi has largely been associated with old people and old ways of farming and whatever,” she said.
In her remarks, NASFAM Head of Policy and Communications, Rejoice Chikakuda, said it is sad that agriculture has, for decades, been regarded as a sub-sector, only designated for the less educated people.
Chikakuda said time had come for university graduates to pursue farming as a career.
“For a long time, agriculture was taken as if it’s one of those sub sectors that is not attractive, especially to the youth, so for them to be able to come and appreciate the things that nasfam is doing. It shows that they have an interest, and hopefully, from whatever they’ve learned here, they’ll be able to go now and start venturing into agriculture more, but the aspect of value adding is an area that we need to focus so much as a country. Malawi does a lot of production,” she said.