Project Overview
In response to the current food crisis in Malawi, IR has successfully implemented a project in some of the worst-affected villages in the south.

Work began in September 2002, in partnership with a local NGO, ZamZam.

The aims of the project are to feed the poor by distributing emergency food supplies and helping to restore failing harvests.

Problem / Project Background
Two years of flooding and droughts have had a devastating effect on Malawi's crop yields. The spread of AIDS has disabled many farming families, leaving breadwinners too ill to look after their land.

Combined with a rapid population growth, and other socio-economic factors, these hostile conditions have led to over 3 million people facing severe food shortage or starvation. Especially vulnerable are children, the elderly, the chronically ill, and pregnant women.

Subsistence farmers are in desperate need of seeds and fertilizers to increase future yields, as well as water to irrigate their land during times of drought.

Project Objectives
The project's wider objectives are:

1. Provide emergency food aid

2. Improve water supplies and irrigation

3. Enable farmers to grow food for the next harvest

Project Activities

1. Distributing family food hampers, containing maize and high-energy porridge cereal

2. Distributing farmers' starters packs, containing maize seeds, groundnut seeds and fertilizer

3. Training the farmers in planting methods

4. Digging borehole wells in 10 villages, with fitted pipes and handpumps
   

Beneficiaries
Food and seeds were distributed to 3,140 households (approx. 18,000 people) in the Zomba district, southern Malawi.

The wells have provided 10,000 villagers with access to water.

Future plans
The first starter pack was given to farmers in September 2002, enabling them to harvest in March/April 2003. The food grown can support a family for six months, but this season's poor harvest has meant that few farmers have been able to save seeds for the next season.

In view of this, Islamic Relief has approved a seed distribution project 2003 to enable farmers to achieve a second crop this year.

Another 3,140 starter packs containing maize seeds, groundnut seeds and fertilizers will be distributed in the first week of May 2003.