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The Minister of Finance and economic affairs Simplex Chithyola Banda on Monday launched a K100Million Youth Agricultural cooperative Grant at a colourful ceremony which took place at the magnificent Crossroads Hotel.
Speaking during the ceremony, Minister Chithyola Banda said youth are the great stakeholders in as far as attainment of Malawi Agenda 2063 is concerned
Chithyola said the grants will help the youths in joining Government to implement the ATM strategy.
“We are here to launch a K100Million Youth Agricultural cooperative Grants, where 18 youth groups are participating. These are cooperatives led by youths themselves, which are now getting grants to get into agriculture production. The issue here is, you have seen yourself that young people are into honey production, fish farming, agro process,” he said.
Chithyola said the good news is that this project is happening under the sponsorship of Malawi Government.
“If we are able to give them resources from our own and are able to do what they are doing, it means we have created a window where young people can’t participate in developing the economy. So it’s a very good signal economically, because it means Malawi young people’s participation on maize economy is very possible without necessarily waiting for other people to come in and give us resources. We are now using our own resources,” he said.
In his address National Youth Council of Malawi Executive Director, Rex Chapota said the the fund is critical in as far as youth empowerment is concerned.
“This fund is basically to transform small scale groups of young people who are already doing some transformative work in the agriculture sector. Actually, we are giving out a grant to 18 youth groups who are ready to become cooperatives in this nation in different value chains” he said.
Chapota said this fund is aimed at ensurig that young people are involved in job creation, and being involved in building up their own incomes, and indeed, they can also support Forex earnings of this nation.
He said they received 145 applications, and only 18 youth groups, were picked.
“What it means is that there is a big demand for financing. Basically, what is happening is that these young people are not starting to do as regarded because of this grant. Rather, they are wanting a grant which can help them to scale up, especially in issues of value addition” he said.
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He said these young people are already doing something positive in their communities, using their own resources, but they want to go to the next level.
“That is why they need these resources to scale up this intervention. Our strategy is to see a collaboration between government and private sector and civil society, because, as you have seen, the youth of Malawi have shown to us that on their own, they can do something. So if government comes in in a big way, private sector comes in a big way, together as a partnership, we can see young people building industries,” he said.
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