New warehouse will facilitate school meals in Malawi

The construction of a new warehouse in Mangochi, Malawi, will enable smallholder farming enterprises to prosper in the years to come. It will also be of important support for the Home Grown School Feeding Programme (HGSFP) in the area – ensuring nutritious meals for the local school children.

In 2015, efforts were made to build a warehouse for the Mthiramanja cooperative in Mangochi, Malawi, but the building was unsuccessful. The warehouse collapsed and laid in ruins for two years.

Now the story has changed. A new warehouse is soon standing thanks to support from We Effect and its Swedish member organisation Lantmännen, through Malawi Lake Basin Programme (MLBP).

MLBP:s role in the Home Grown School Feeding Programme (HGSFP) is to facilitate collective marketing of commodities required by the HGSFP. One of the challenges in doing so have been the lack of storage facilities, resulting in farmers being forced to sell their commodities to other traders early after harvest.

With the new warehouse, the commodities can be stored and later sold to the HGSFP – ensuring that school children in the area, regardless of the wealth of their households, get a locally grown, fresh, healthy and nutritious meal in school.

Learning from past experience, MLBP has improved and strengthened the supervision of the construction process. This video (in Chichewa) is from one of the site visits conducted by the overseeing engineer Alfred Chitanu and the responsible staff from MLBP: https://youtu.be/3btwZwVz4rI

The Home Grown School Feeding Programme is funded by World Food Programme.