"MITC calls for responsible agriculture investment to avert economic tumoil"

The Malawi Investment and Trade Centre (MITC) this week emphasized on the need for the public to embrace responsible agriculture investment...developed by the Committee on World Food Security (CFS). [They include] fostering gender equality and women’s empowerment, engaging youth and empowerment, respect tenure of land, fisheries, forests, cultural heritage, access to water, and support diversity and innovation, among others......MITC Chief Executive Officer, Clement Kumbemba...said that the move will help to close gaps and propose ways of strengthening the process to ensure a more coherent screening process for agriculture investments.

Kumbemba said that there are projects that have stalled due to misunderstandings between communities and investors on land which could be avoided if the country had sound investment guidelines. “Quite a number of investment projects have stagnated a bit because we are still trying to reason with the communities so that they can make available the amount of land that those investments are requiring. “In Salima, we have an investor who is looking for 20,000 hectares of land and this far, we have only managed to negotiate about 5,000 hectares, but we are still engaging the communities to allow the investor to commence operations,” Kumbemba said.