Projects in Malawi
Tiyeni operates through hotspots and adopted projects across all three regions of Malawi, responding to community requests. Tiyeni draws on 15 years of operating to deliver life-changing impact.
Central Hotspot - Chiwamba
A Hotspot can be defined as an area where the target is for the majority of land farmed in the area to be in Deep Beds, so that the sum of all the Deep Bed land contributes to major improvements. The greater the percentage of land under DBF in an area, the greater the community benefits in the form of soil moisture, streams running for longer and wells staying fuller, in addition to the benefits of substantially higher and improving yields.
Chiwamba EPA (Extension Planning Area) is located near the Malawi Capital, Lilongwe, with the highest profile possible to encourage and inspire others. The project works with smallholder farmer families from across the EPA’s 21 sections (communities), which contain over 33,000 farming households.
First launched in 2020, the reach of the hotspot is growing in 2021 with support from donors including the Metabolic Studio in Los Angeles.
Chitheka and Chitipa
This project began in January 2019 with full support from our partner, the Austin Bailey Foundation. Activities have transformed small-scale farming, with significant positive effects on the livelihoods of the poor through increases in food availability and incomes. Read about the project on the new Austin Bailey website here.
Yield increases of adopting farmers have been phenomenal, and for maize have risen from less than 2 tons, to an average of 8 tons per hectare. The majority of farmers have moved to use maize as a cash crop, depending on cassava as staple food instead, and increasing their income.
The project has additionally made important steps to regenerate damaged land, which was found to be a particular challenge in Chitheka.
The Austin Bailey Foundation is supporting communities in Chitipa during 2021. This was the reaction of a local leader in a Chitipa village, that had been isolated for many years in this remote northern area:
“The coming in of Deep Bed Farming has made us proud and happy because we can now access farming information”
Manyamula
This project began in November 2018 with full support from our partner, the Halcrow Foundation. Read about the project on their website here.
Project success:
The project has built community cohesion and strengthened the agricultural system in the project area, to enable farmers to achieve transformational crop yields and incomes.
Deep Bed farmer numbers continue to grow, and the lead and follower farmers work in groups through peer to peer learning. Lead farmers share ideas on how they can extend plots and help their follower farmers in the fields. One group of 10 farmers from last season has been joined by 13 new farmers to create a super group of 23 in the village of Msimuko!
Tiyeni has a sustainable continuation strategy for projects, and this area is now under direct management of local stakeholders and the community, with support from Tiyeni's management and training team in Mzuzu.
