Over sixteen thousand households are expected to benefit from a government initiative aimed at promoting adoption of sustainable land and water management practices.
The five year Malawi Watershed Services Improvement Project (MWASIP)-aims at increasing the adoption of sustainable landscape management practices and improve watershed services in targeted areas.
The five-year project which also intends to assist the targeted households to register their land.
Speaking to MIJ Online, on the sidelines of a media orientation held in Blantyre- Alice Gwedeza – Technical Team Member for MWASIP said this was key to promoting land ownership among vulnerable groups such as women and children.
“Malawi came through land reforms because of the weak land laws that we had…and these land laws were established in 2016. So, when government came up with these land laws it was to ensure people have the security of tenure and be able to prove ownership through their registered documents.” Said Gwedeza
According to Gwedeza – authorities have already compiled a list of beneficiaries and that awareness campaigns are underway to sensitize the targeted communities on land registration.
Apart from land registration which is under scaling up landscape restoration component, the project also intends to improve watershed services in priority river basins including the shire river basin.
Gwedeza added that through the project, committees have been formed and trained to benefit from the performance-based grants for landscape restoration which is targeting to restore 95 hectors of degraded land in the upper and lower shire basin.
Furthermore, the project is also providing matching grants for enhancing agriculture-based livelihoods to improve productivity and value addition as well as access to markets.