Paving the way for land titling for Malawi’s largest tea smallholder cooperative

The challenge

Malawi’s tea smallholders and estates can benefit from registering the customary land of tea smallholders under new national land laws. Their land tenure has become more insecure over the past decades, as the pressure on land has increased due to rising population density. The land tenure insecurity has affected smallholder longer-term outlook and productivity and could gradually add to creating an unstable environment for tea estates in specific areas.

In order to assess the business case for implementing land registration under the new land laws, the parties require a specialist to analyse its feasibility, engage national stakeholders and prepare a way forward.

“We expect that registration will go a long way in encouraging our smallholders to invest in their land”

Fredrick Mkwapatira, SAT tea cooperative leader

Purpose
Analyse feasibility and prepare implementation for large-scale smallholder customary land registration

Service
Feasibility Study

Country
Malawi

Commodity Chain:
Tea

Client:
Sukabizi Association Trust (largest tea smallholder cooperative)

Impact
17,000 smallholder tea farmers reached

Solution

With the funding and advice from IDH (Sustainable Trade Initiative), Meridia conducted a feasibility study and successfully overcame key hurdles: 

• Stakeholder engagement: approval from the customary authorities

• Stakeholder engagement: Approval from the government of Malawi

• Clarified the business case for customary land registration including a financial model for tea value chain stakeholders

Benefits

The project’s results are beneficial to the Sukabizi Association Trust and the wider Malawian tea industry as they paved the way to make an informed decision on engaging and investing in land registration and implementing it directly.