Malawi is a land-locked country in southern Africa. Three-fourths of Malawi’s 13 million people rely
on smallholder agriculture for their livelihoods. Increasing population, accelerating deforestation, poor soil and
water management, and increasing poverty and land degradation directly impact the food security and human
health of millions of Malawians. Cropping systems which combine cereal crops, agroforestry and small doses of
inorganic fertilizers produce food-crop yields greater than inorganic fertilizers alone on degraded soils, as well as
recuperating soil nutrients over a period of years. These agroforestry practices improve the livelihoods of farm
families, lower risks associated with fertilizer price increases and drought and at the same time improve biodiversity
and nutrient and water cycling in the agro-ecosystem. The World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) has a long
history of agroforestry research and development in Malawi dating back to the 1980s. In 2007-2011, ICRAF
implemented the Malawi Agroforestry Food Security Project (AFSP) through inancial support from Irish Aid.
ICRAF’s task in AFSP was to build a strong partnership to reach 200,000 farming families in 11 districts. The
purpose of AFSP was to combine tested agroforestry practices, effective partnership and informed policies to increase
food security and income, and improve livelihood opportunities for rural communities in Malawi, through
accelerated adoption of fertilizer trees, fruit trees, fodder trees and fuel-wood trees. To accomplish these purposes,
ICRAF provided the farming communities with planting material (tree seeds and seedlings), and the knowledge
of how to care for them and effectively combine them with food crops. The beneiciaries of the project saw increases
in household food security and nutrition. However, dificulties were encountered in transporting tree
seeds and seedlings across eleven districts in a timely fashion, and in managing the low of reporting and disbursements
of funding among such a large group of collaborators. Several solutions were implemented which improved
performance in these areas, and which allowed the group to reach very near the targeted number of
participants, and to plan for a second phase of the project.
Keywords. Agroforestry, food security, Malawi, World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), development partners,
soil degradation