Malawi’s decentralized agricultural extension delivery system: The approaches, services offered and linkage of actors

Abstract

Agricultural extension is central in the agricultural development process. Generally, Malawi has continuously been reforming her extension services in order to increase accessibility and uptake of technologies by farmers. The study on which the paper is based aimed at determining the strength of linkages of different actors in the Malawi’s decentralized extension system. The study adopted the cross-sectional research design whereby a structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 150 randomly selected smallholder maize farmers in Mangochi district. Supplementary data were collected from 10 focus group discussions and 9 key informant interviews. IBM-SPPS was used to determine descriptive statistics. Social network analysis was used to determine the strength of linkages between actors in the agricultural sector. Findings show that the government, private sector and lead farmers are interconnected in the provision of agricultural extension services to smallholder farmers. It is concluded that the district has strong linkages of the three main actors in the provision of coordinated and uniform agricultural extension services to smallholder farmers. Therefore, there is need for the government and other agriculture sector stakeholders to build the capacity of the frontline extension staff on approaches that can help farmers practice what is taught using farmer field schools which are currently underutilized. In addition, all the extension service providers need to mobilize resources to strengthen Malawi’s district agricultural extension structures specifically, at the Traditional Authority and Group Village Headman levels for improved coordination and linkages.