Malawi

Malawi  means “fire flames”. The country gets its name from the reflection of the rising sun on the waters of the forth largest fresh water lake on the continent, Lake Malawi. The name originates from the Maravi Kingdom, which spanned the current borders of Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia in the 16th Century. The country is also affectionately known as “The Warm Heart of Africa” due to the kind and hospitable nature of its inhabitants.

However, Malawi is challenged by a largely agricultural economy of small scale farms. It has the fourth highest percentage of people living in extreme poverty in the world - 70% of people live on less than $1.90 per day. The fact that the declining tobacco market accounts for 69.5% the country’s total exports is increasingly problematic for Malawian families. Malawi has been producing tea for well over a century and it is the continent’s second largest tea producer after Kenya.

Almost 85% of Malawi’s people live in rural areas. Malawi has one of the youngest populations in the world, with 43% of people under the age of 15. In Malawi less than 10% of girls earn a high school diploma. Approximately 20% of school aged girls are prevented from continuing their due to lack of menstrual health education and access to menstrual pads. Malawi has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world, with approximately 1 in 2 girls married and/or raising children by the age of 18.

The drought in Africa since 2016 has caused severe food shortages. De-foresting practices brought on by people cutting down trees to make charcoal are worsening the drought conditions—as precious top soil is lost farming becomes more difficult. Because Malawi depends largely on hydro-powered electricity, the drought has also caused blackouts and power shortages. Dairy farmers couldn’t refrigerate their products. Others could not harvest, process, or distribute. This has led to and lack of food and chronic malnourishment.

Sources:

https://opportunity.org

https://africanchildtrust.org.uk

https://www.worldvision.org

Phalombe District 

Chidubah Rising is in the Phalombe District of Southwestern Malawi between Mount Mulanga (which rises to nearly 9900 ft) to the South and Lake Chilwa to the north. Its eastern border is Shared with Mozambique. Much of the area is a colluvial plain at an altitude of 1970-2300 ft. The flat plain is broken by steep, rocky hills, and mountains.

Phalombe is largely an agriculturally based economy. More fertile and well drained, but thin topsoil layers surround hills and mountains while the lower plain is a mixture from coarse sand to heavy clay. The heavy clay soils are seasonably, or permanently waterlogged while the thin topsoil areas are threatened by drought.

More than 75% of cultivated land is cropped in maize. Other crops include pulses (cowpeas and pigeon peas), groundnuts, millets/sorghum, cassava, and some rice. Livestock ownership is more rare – 23% have no livestock, 71% own chickens (almost a third of these only own one chicken). Fewer than one sixth of Phalombe households own cattle, one fifth have goats, and only one in ten has pigs.

Tillable land scarcity because of small holding size per family, drought prone climate, drive many men and entire households to migrate in search of land and employment. The scarcity of men in households means farming labor is limited (37% of households in Phalombe are headed by women compared with 28% in Malawi as a whole.).

The Phalombe Project, University of Florida, https//ufdc.ufl.edu//UF00066202/00001

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