Platforms

African Institute of Corporate Citizenship (AICC) is a non-governmental organization whose main mandate is to promote role of business in building resilient communities and sustainable business through partnership.  AICC through funding from UN Women is implementing on a project in Women Economic Empowerment (WEE) whose main aim is to improve the productivity and access to Market through climate smart Agriculture among groundnut farmers women in Mchinji. The pilot project will be implemented in 6 Traditional Authorities (TAs) and 3 Extension Planning Area (EPA) namely Chiosha, Mikundi, Nkanda, in Mchinji district central region of Malawi. The project will work with 12 identified cooperatives with 3000 farmers as its target. The project will achieve its goals through its 5 main objective with AICC focusing on outcome 1 and 2 and below are the objectives

1. Women access to non labour time saving equipment’s and services increased
2.  Women access to climate-smart non labour agriculture inputs and services improved
3.  Access to climate –resilient Agricultural extension services for men and women improved
4. Women shifts to high value agricultural Enterprises and inclusion of green agricultural value chains at National level achieved
5. Capacity of Women value chains organisation for production and marketing improved

The African Institute of Corporate Citizenship (AICC) in partnership with the Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) is implementing a Micro Investing project called Commercial Agribusiness for Sustainable Horticulture (CASH). The project is currently being implemented in Mndolera Extension Planning Area (EPA) across all the nine sections in the EPA. The project is aiming at reaching to 2500 smallholder farmers in a three-year period in Dowa district. The project is currently at a phase where scalability is being tested other than the aspect of Affordability, profitability and Simplicity. The Project is using and promoting micro investment concept using drip irrigation technology. Farmers make investment decisions to buy the micro-investment (MI) kits which comprise the drip kit, fertilizer as well as quality seedlings. The MI approach success factors are based on its simplicity, profitability and affordability. The specific objectives of the project are:

(1) To increase profitability for smallholder farming through drip irrigation.

(2) To increase production and productivity of horticultural produce.

The project has also proven to be unique and with a lot of potential in the sense that people are able to notice the difference between watering using drip irrigation system and their conventional methods which are generally labor intensive and tedious. The project has seen increased adoption which is attributed to affordability, relevance and efficiency of the technology coupled with increased profit margins after sales.