Key Facts Series

× Highlights
• There is an operational agricultural cooperative in every tenth community in Malawi, but they are not well utilized to access markets or services.
• Almost no farmers (0.6 percent in 2019/20) receive extension advice through cooperatives.
• Although an increasing share of farmers engage in input and output markets, few do so through cooperatives.
• Few farmers buy inputs on credit in general, and almost none receive credit from cooperatives.
• Farmers who buy inputs from cooperatives do not pay less than farmers who buy inputs elsewhere.
• Farmers who sell their produce to cooperatives also do not obtain better prices than farmers who sell to other buyers.

× This is the first Education Key Facts Sheet in a series of Key Facts sheets that IFPRI produces based on the Integrated Household Surveys (IHS). The purpose of the series is to present data relevant to key policy issues on agriculture, food systems, and development topics in Malawi. Other Key Facts Sheets are available on our website at massp.ifpri.info.

× Across a wide range of inequality measures, survey data measure lower levels of inequality in 2019/20 compared to a decade earlier in 2010/11. The latest survey data put Malawi’s Gini Coefficient at 0.38. The 20% richest households consume about half of the country’s total consumption. The poorest 20% account for only 6% of total consumption. Differences between districts or regions are not the primary contributors to inequality. Differences across households within the same region or district contribute much more to total inequality. Similarly, there is significant inequality among households with heads of similar education levels and among those with similar occupations. These within-group differences contribute more to inequality than the across-group differences. In all the periods under analysis, urban households consumed around twice the consumption of their rural counterparts.

× This is the fourth in a series of Key Facts sheets that IFPRI is producing based on the Integrated Household Surveys (IHS). The purpose of the series is to present data relevant to key policy issues on agriculture, food systems, and development topics in Malawi. Other Key Facts Sheets are available on our website at massp.ifpri.info.

× This is the third in a series of Key Facts sheets that IFPRI has produced based on the fifth Malawi Integrated Household Survey of 2019/20. The purpose of the series is to present data relevant to key policy issues on agriculture, food systems, and development topics in Malawi.

× This is a second Food and Nutrition Key Facts sheet in a series of Key Facts sheets that IFPRI is producing based on Integrated Household Surveys (IHS). The purpose of the series is to present data relevant to key policy issues on agriculture, food systems, and development topics in Malawi. Other Key Facts Sheets are available on our website at massp.ifpri.info.

× Four out of five Malawian households engage in some crop production. Rural households are most likely to farm – nine out of ten do so. However, even in towns and cities, almost one-third of urban households engage in some farming. However, only 60 percent of households engaged in farming reported selling any of what they harvested – while almost 70 percent of farming households in the Central region sell some of their harvest, just under 60 percent in the Northern region and 45 percent in the Southern region do so. The commercial importance of the crops produced by farming households differ: Maize, sorghum, finger millet, pearl millet, and cassava predominantly are grown for own consumption. Soyabean, tobacco, cotton, and Irish potato are produced primarily for sale. Rice, groundnut, pigeonpea, bean/cowpea, and sweet potato are all important for subsistence, while also sold. Trends are seen of increased shares of farming households both producing and selling several of these crops. Farming households in the Southern region are much less likely to sell the maize they produce than households in the other two regions. A slightly greater share of the maize consumed by Malawian households is purchased rather than own-produced. While this is the case for urban households, as expected, it also holds for rural households. Greatest reliance on the market for maize by rural households occurs in the months up to January. For the period October 1999 to February 2020, about 70 percent of all maize consumed by Malawian households, whether in rural communities or in urban centers, was obtained from the market.

× This poster uses data from the fourth Integrated Household Survey (IHS4) conducted in all 28 districts and the four major cities of Malawi in 2016/17. The IHS is a nationally representative survey which collects multitopic household and community data, including on the consumption of approximately 150 food items. The data was collected from 12,447 households over one calendar year to account for seasonality. The IHS4 consumption estimates were combined with data on the nutrient content of foods from the Food and Agriculture Organization to estimate nutrient consumption per person per day.

× This poster complements our fifth Key Facts Sheet on poverty in Malawi, published in May 2019. The maps and the table are based on data from the fourth Integrated Household Survey (IHS4), which were collected in 2016-2017.

× This is the fifth in a series of Key Facts sheets that IFPRI is producing based on the Integrated Household Surveys (IHS). The purpose of the series is to present data relevant to key policy issues on agriculture, food systems, and development topics in Malawi. Other Key Facts sheets will be produced in the near future.

× This is the fourth in a series of Key Facts sheets that IFPRI is producing based on the third and fourth Integrated Household Surveys (IHSs). The purpose of the series is to present data relevant to key policy issues on agriculture, food systems, and development topics in Malawi. Other Key Facts sheets will be produced in the near future.

× This is the third in a series of Key Facts sheets that IFPRI is producing based on the third and fourth Integrated Household Surveys (IHSs). The purpose of the series is to present data relevant to key policy issues on agriculture, food systems, and development topics in Malawi. Other Key Facts sheets will be produced in the near future.

× This is the second in a series of Key Facts sheets that IFPRI is producing based on the third (2010/11) and fourth (2016/17) Integrated Household Surveys (IHS). The purpose of the series is to present data relevant to key policy issues on agriculture, food systems, and development topics in Malawi. Other Key Facts Sheets are available on our website at massp.ifpri.info.

× This is the first in a series of Key Facts sheets that IFPRI will be producing based on the third and fourth Integrated Household Surveys (IHS). The purpose of the series is to present data relevant to key policy issues on agriculture, food systems, and development topics in Malawi. Other Key Facts sheets will be produced in the near future.