Italian Cooperation in the country

Under an institutional point of view, the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS in the Italian acronym), Maputo Office, is responsible for cooperation activities in Malawi.

AICS Maputo is currently coordinating a regional initiative named "Mitigating the impacts of El Niño-induced drought in Southern Africa, to strengthen resilience for beneficiary communities" (AID 010862). The initiative, implemented in Mozambique, Swaziland, Malawi and Zimbabwe, complements the "Emergency initiative to mitigate te impacts of El Niño-induced drought in Southern Africa" (AID 010746), implemented between 2016 and 2018 to answer the 2015-2016 crisis. In both programmes, AICS funded project proposals presented and implemented by Italian civil society organisations (CSOs) which were active in Malawi.

Strategic development document in the country

The national strategicy develoment document for Malawi is the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy (MGDS) III: https://cepa.rmportal.net/Library/government-publications/the-malawi-growth-and-development-strategy-mgds-iii.

The Italian strategy and the areas of intervention

Between 2015 and 2016, two consecutive productive seasons, pivotal for rural communities' subsistence, went either partially or totally lost because of the adverse conditions caused by El Niño in the whole of Southern Africa. The same marked impact affected pastoralist communities, with the loss of numerous livestock. Livestock value has been decreasing due to their poor conditions and increasing food prices made millions of people extremely vulnerable. In order to mitigate the impacts of such phenomenon, the Italian Development Cooperation intervened with financial resources aimed both at providing relief through primary assistance actions for the most vulnerable, and at enabling the reactivation of agropastoral and economic activities in the medium term.





Acknowledging the necessity to intervene as soon as possible, in fact, the Italian Development Cooperation drafted a two-phase action plan: first, mitigating the impact of the drought on the population in the short term; second, a structural intervention aimed at improving resilience for the affected aras, whose causes are linked to the recurrent El Niño but whose effects are amplified by climate change.





Phase I ("Emergency initiative to mitigate the impacts of El Niño-induced drought in Southern Africa", AID 0101746) ended in 2018. Phase II ("Mitigating the impacts of El Niño-induced drought in Southern Africa, to strengthen resilience for beneficiary communities", AID 010862) began in September 2017 for Malawi and will close in 2019.


 

Alignment with the local government strategy and harmonization with donor community interventions

The European
Union and its Member States, including Italy, participate in
both the operational coordination at the regional level of Southern
Africa and in the individual countries of intervention and articulate
their response initiatives to the strategic lines defined in the call by the Southern Africa Development
Community (SADC) and the Regional Inter-Agency Standing Committee
(RIASCO) action plan, with the aim of optimizing interventions with the population needs in the short, medium and long term.

Goals and expected results

Among
the objectives of the Italian Development Cooperation in the country, with
reference to the initiatives under way, one should mention mitigating
the negative effects on food security and nutrition caused by the
prolonged drought caused by the El Niño phenomenon in the Southern
African region, in particular strengthening
the resilience of population through assistance to agriculture and
livestock keeping, the promotion of irrigation and marketing of
agricultural
products, the strengthening of technical and managerial skills of
producers and technical services, the mitigation of the effects of
drought on most vulnerable sections of the population.

The
expected results include the improvement of productivity and production
of agro-pastoral activities, the increase in the average disposable
income for small-holders' households, imrpoved food security
and nutrition (especially for the most vulnerable) and greater resilience to shocks - both climate-related and not - for the populations involved.

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