By Bishop Witmos
As a way of improving economic and nutrition status of communities in Mangochi and Zomba, the Titukulane project through its resilience food security activity has distributed livestock to 14,700 households in the two districts.
The project which is supported by USAID, involve the distribution of chickens and goats, where households are receiving 10 chickens or five goats (per household)
Speaking during the launch of the pass-on programme of the livestock to beneficiaries, at Malindi, in the area of Traditional Authority Chowe in Mangochi, Food Security Technical Coordinator for Tutukulane, Henry Khonyongwa said that the project which started in October last year, targets pregnant and lactating mothers in the district.
Khonyongwa said that the goal is to support government efforts in ensuring that vulnerable communities are self-resilient to the economic challenges they face at household level.
“We are implementing the resilience food security project in Mangochi and Zomba to ensure that households in the districts should have access to nutritious food and access to capital, in order to improve their livelihood
Our plan is to ensure that we have distributed livestock to 16,000 households in the two districts, who in turn, are going to pass on similar amount of livestock to other households. Currently, since October last year we have already reached out to 13,000 households with chicken and 1,700 households with goats.” said Khonyongwa.
In her remarks, one of the beneficiaries for the pass-on programme, Regina Julius of Malindi in Mangochi, commended Titukulane for the initiative, saying that it has helped her household to be financial stable.
District Animal Health and Livestock Officer for Mangochi, Desmond Mkhaya said that through the initiative, people in the district have realised the importance of livestock farming.
“Livestock farming has been there before, but farmers took it as a second option that whenever crops have failed they resorted to livestock
However, this time around people are rearing crops simultaneously with livestock, a development which is bringing huge impact on ground,” said Mkhaya.
