On a hot afternoon in Luchenza, Thyolo District, Clifford Yuda Likwinji moves slowly between vegetable beds along the Thuchira River, a watering can in hand. There is nothing dramatic about the scene. No technology on display.
No slogans about transformation. Just persistence. Likwinji, 33, is a trained journalist.
He farms on a small plot measured more by what it can support than what it promises. Until recently, agriculture was not part of his plan. Like many graduates, he associated farming with drudgery and low returns, preferring a white-collar job in an air-conditioned workplace.
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However, that view shifted only after time spent managing a farm in Botswana in 2024. In Botswana, farmers were pushing productivity in dry conditions. Yet back in Malawi, water covered a fifth of the country’s territory but flowed unused all the way to the Indian Ocean.
“The question that followed was practical rather than romantic: if farming could work in that arid country, why was it failing back home in Malawi?” Likwinji wondered. Since returning, he has been experimenting with irrigation and organic methods, constrained mainly by capital. Without a pump, he waters manually.
It is inefficient, but it keeps the crops alive. What stands out is not scale, but intent. “I used to think farming was just hard labour,” he says.
“Now I see it as a business.” That shift in perception is quietly repeating itself elsewhere. It marks the rise of young people jumping to the front of the industry that employs at least 80 percent of Malawians of working age, but often left to the elderly In Salima, communications specialist Daudi Kayisi runs a 100-hectare operation combining fruit orchards, livestock and irrigation. Like Likwinji, he is also a former journalist who chose to leave formal employment—– a decision driven less by passion for farming than by discomfort with dependency.
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