Addressing Seasonal Hunger in Malawi with Low-Cost Planning Tools
Country: Malawi
Amount: $1,497,067
Duration: 2 years
Problem
Seasonal changes in food availability are a cause of suffering for people living in poverty, especially in countries where farming is a major part of the economy.
In Malawi, over half of rural households and a third of urban households experience seasonal hunger in pre-harvest months. Despite the abundance at harvest, farmers typically have a difficult time stretching their income until next year’s harvest.
Approach
Guided Financial Planning for Farmers: Our grant supports a partnership with a major farmer-support NGO to test and scale a simple but powerful intervention: helping farmers plan their finances and food stocks to last through the lean season. In practical terms, this means teaching and guiding farmers right after harvest on how much grain to store or money to save, and how to budget monthly until the next harvest. The guidance is low-cost and can be delivered through brief training sessions and tools (like calendars or mobile prompts) that farmers use to track their consumption and savings.
Evidence-Backed Strategy: An earlier study in Zambia by the same research team showed promising results. Farmers who received a simple guided planning intervention increased their savings by 15% and subsequently achieved a 9% increase in crop revenue the next season. This indicates that better planning not only helps families get through the hunger season, but also allows them to invest more in their farms (for example, buying seeds or fertilizer for the next planting), creating a virtuous cycle.
Scaling Up in Malawi: With these positive results, the program is being adapted for Malawi’s context and rolled out on a much larger scale. The implementing partner, One Acre Fund (OAF), will integrate the planning module into its services for farmers. Over the next two years, the goal is to reach 512,000 individuals across Malawi. This involves training OAF’s field officers and volunteer farmer leaders to deliver the planning curriculum, as well as tailoring the approach to different financial contexts (since not all farmers have the same income patterns or needs). Importantly, the intervention remains extremely cheap to deliver per farmer, since it uses existing networks and simple materials.
Path to Scale
Leverage Existing Networks: One Acre Fund already serves about 4 million farming households in Africa with agricultural support. If the Malawi scale-up proves successful, OAF intends to incorporate the seasonal planning toolkit across its entire network. This means the program could quickly expand to millions of farmers in other countries where OAF operates, using the same training infrastructure without needing new staff or large funds.
Policy Adoption: The project team is also working with One Acre Fund’s global policy unit to share findings with governments. If national governments see strong evidence that guided planning reduces hunger and improves farmer incomes, they can adopt and fund the program as part of their agricultural extension services. Co-investment by governments would ensure the program’s long-term sustainability, eventually letting local authorities take ownership of funding and running these planning sessions for farmers.
Why we think the grant is cost-effective
Building on One Acre Fund’s existing infrastructure, the additional per-beneficiary cost is $1.10 when excluding evaluation costs, and is expected to decrease further at scale.
The intervention generates substantial financial returns for farmers, with an implied return on investment of over 500%.