The Monitoring and Analysing Food and Agricultural Policies (MAFAP) programme supports governments in identifying, articulating and assessing options for reforming food and agricultural policies. The programme has four main objectives:
•	Collect, assemble and use targeted and policyrelevant data including prices, market access costs and public expenditure in support of the food and agriculture sector, as well as policy decisions;
•	Consolidate and strengthen national policy monitoring systems to measure policy effects and identify current policy ‘problems’ that affect the competitiveness of agricultural producers;
•	Articulate policy options and assess respective ex-post and ex-ante analysis to support suitable government reforms;
•	Engage national stakeholders and development partners in policy dialogue as part of a more inclusive policy reform process.
Since 2009, FAO’s MAFAP programme has been working in several developing countries to create sustainable policy monitoring systems and carry out a consistent set of policy and public expenditure analyses across a wide range of agricultural value chains.
To do this, MAFAP works with national partners to build capacity and systematically analyse the impact of food and agriculture policies and public expenditure on market incentives and disincentives faced by producers and other actors in key agricultural value chains. MAFAP analyses are used to inform targeted food and agricultural policy reforms that will result in a more conducive environment for agricultural investment and productivity growth, especially for smallholder farmers.
MAFAP’s quantitative indicators are comparable across commodities, countries and over time.  They provide sound evidence to support informed policy dialogue at national, regional and international levels, and can therefore be used to advocate for policy reforms when and where they are needed. Moreover, the common set of indicators makes it easier to understand how different food and agricultural policies work in various contexts.
This report constitutes the first compendium of the policy monitoring and analysis work undertaken in the 
framework of MAFAP in Malawi. It offers an overview of MAFAP results based on a rigorous methodology for measuring the effects of agricultural and food policies on agriculture and rural development, for analysing the level and composition of public expenditure allocated to food and agriculture and analysing the policy coherence. The approach is novel as it has not been used in Malawi before. The report establishes a baseline to support the dialogue on such policies in Malawi among key decision makers and with development partners. This MAFAP report seeks to: (1) establish a baseline for a monitoring system to measure policy effects; (2) provide evidence based information on policy effects and public expenditure allocated to food and agriculture; (3) identify current policy constraints to agricultural development; (4) inform and engage policy dialogue, especially on the key constraints on production incentives for farmers or accelerated development of specific value chains; and (5) promote a more inclusive policy reform process. However, the report alone is not intended to advocate for particular reforms: according to the MAFAP phase II (2014–2019) approach, such changes must be endogenous, and if they take place, must result from an intensive and highly consultative dialogue on government policies, primarily with the government but also among other stakeholders in the country.