THE QUALITY OF AGRICULTURE AND FOOD SECURITY POLICY PROCESSES AT NATIONAL LEVEL IN MALAWI: RESULTS FROM THE 2015 MALAWI AGRICULTURE AND FOOD SECURITY POLICY PROCESSES BASELINE SURVEY

Over the past ten years, there have been several initiatives in Malawi to strengthen the processes through which the design and content of policies, strategies, and programs in the agriculture sector that affect the nation’s food security are established. Broadly linked to the operationalization in Malawi of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) of the African Union, the government of Malawi led a multi-stakeholder effort to develop the Agriculture Sector Wide Approach (ASWAp) for the period 2011 to 2015. This serves as the CAADP agricultural sector investment plan for the country. The implementation of the ASWAp is guided technically by multi-stakeholder Technical Working Groups (TWG), of which there are seven. The TWGs report to a higher-level Agricultural Sector Working Group (ASWG), whose membership is drawn from across the full range of stakeholders in Malawi’s agriculture sector. The ASWG has onward links to the political leadership of Malawi. A key component of the implementation of ASWAp is a mutual accountability framework for monitoring and evaluating progress made. The regular meetings of the TWGs and the ASWG are components of this, while an annual agricultural Joint Sector Review (JSR) report provides a formal accounting of progress achieved and challenges that remain