After the announcement that the National Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (Nasme) will be launching a private company called Nasme Exports and Imports Limited, Nasme has announced that markets in India and other Asian countries with horticulture produces.

The Nasme Chairperson, William Mwale, said there is a huge demand for Malawian products in Asia especially pigeon peas and onions. The development follows after stakeholders in the local agricultural sector vouched for increased diversification in output, following a decline in sales of the country’s cash crops, due to various global factors. The markets will be an opportunity for farmers to focus on growing other profitable produces, such as onions. “We have onions all over in Blantyre, Dowa and Mzimba they have nowhere to sell, we just needed a mechanism where people would come together, pack them nicely and put them on a plane to those markets hence the export company,” Mwale said.

Also in efforts to diversify Malawi’s agricultural output, Tobacco Association of Malawi (Tama), the largest grouping of tobacco growers, has rebranded into Tama Farmers Trust, taking on board other crop value chains in the process

The rebranding exercise follows the association’s 2019 Annual Congress which ratified that the institution be rebranded in the wake of the slowdown in the global tobacco consumption, among others. “Any farmer of any value chain can now be our member. We want to give attention to other value chains apart from tobacco. We will now diversify crop production and marketing to ensure that farmers sustain themselves economically,” said Tama Farmers Trust chief executive officer (CEO) Felix Thole.