by Tate Munro,

Team Leader, Growth Poles

As global food insecurity rises, Malawi is quietly emerging as a potential leader in one of the world’s most resilient and increasingly valuable crops: legumes. But can it convert this advantage into a globally competitive industry?

Malawi’s agricultural sector is under pressure from climate change, declining soil health, weakening commodity markets, and underdeveloped infrastructure, particularly in irrigation and value chains. In my role as Team Leader for the Palladium Growth Poles Project, I often see smallholders and agribusinesses respond by shifting to hardy, low-input crops such as soybeans, groundnuts (peanuts), and sugar beans. In fact, since 2003, the country's soybean sector has s expanded dramatically from 30,000 MT to an estimated 305,000 MT in 2024. Today, it is the third-largest soybean producer in Southern Africa, a top producer of groundnuts and common beans, and a world leader in legume research, placing the country in a prime position to capitalize on global demand for legumes.

Increasingly valued as healthy plant-based protein alternatives for people, as animal feed, and for multi-purpose food industry ingredients, legumes have become a fast-growing global market. Their ability as soil health improvers also makes them valuable in low-income countries for livelihood resilience and food and nutritional security. Yet while domestic production has expanded, the country lags in the modernization and productivity needed to compete globally.

Turning partnerships into progress

Through a collaboration that combines each partner’s expertise, Palladium’s Growth-Poles Project, Agricane’s Sangowa Research and Innovation Hub, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Soybean Innovation Lab (SIL) are equipping Malawi’s legume value chain and farmers with the innovation and technology needed.

SIL, together with Malawi’s Department of Agricultural Research Services (DARS) and global research institutions like CIAT, IITA, ICRISAT, and other CGIARs, provides improved and more sellable varieties that mature faster, yield more, withstand heat and drought, resist increasingly prevalent crop diseases, and offer much-improved nutrition. Sangowa tests these in real-world environments, while local farmers assess quality and market demand. Growth Poles coordinates the initiative and, through risk buy-down, accelerates investment in research and private-sector-led diffusion while strengthening seed systems and value chains through policy, advocacy, and networking initiatives.

The private sector is also essential because, in my experience, bankable, profitable ventures are the strongest drivers of investment and growth, the benefits of which flow throughout the value chain to the smallholder via better agronomy, inputs, and seed varieties, and to government through jobs, tax revenue, and economic expansion.

Where innovation meets markets

The upcoming 2026 Legume Tour connects the dots by showcasing the latest market trends alongside advances in technology and innovation to end-users, and then working backward through the value chain to identify the key factors and investments needed to meet their demand.

Beginning at Sangowa’s Research and Innovation Hub, before moving on to processors and traders in Malawi’s largest city, Blantyre, the Tour provides an opportunity for stakeholders to interact with researchers, see new seed and technology under real-world conditions, understand regional and international markets, and build networks with customers, traders, transporters, and processors.  This is the third legume industry event the Growth Poles Project has sponsored, and momentum is building for the partnership solutions the events promote.

Success in our sights

Together, we are on track to fulfill the goals, but significant barriers remain.  Drought and flood risks, which have grown over time in Malawi in response to climate change, have made rainfed crop production increasingly unreliable. The Malawian government’s Shire Valley Transformation Project, for which Agricane has been a key advisor, will start in early 2027 and bring irrigation to 44,000 hectares, serving 48,000 households, organized into farmer cooperatives by Agricane. But training to shift farmers from rainfed to irrigated agriculture, and artisanal maize farmers to become serious producers of legumes and other strategic crops, needs to be urgently accelerated through investment and coordination. Meanwhile, Central and Northern Malawi require greater efforts in rainwater harvesting and storage to cope with today’s shorter, but more intense rainfall windows. Above all, convincing reluctant farmers to adopt new varieties depends on the combined efforts of farmers’ unions and cooperatives, the government’s Department of Agricultural Research Services, and COMESA, which registers and distributes the new seed varieties.

But with growing investment in these areas, there is an opportunity to establish more consistent, reliable trade and agricultural policies that prioritize exports alongside domestic markets to build investor confidence, strengthen food security, and reduce dependence on imports.

Now or never?

Addressing all the factors is challenging. But through partnerships such as the Sangowa-SIL-Growth Poles initiatives, which temporarily lower investment risks and bring together smallholder farmers, the private sector, government, and development partners, Malawi can transform its headstart in legume production and scientific innovation into a regionally and globally competitive position. Based on the progress I have seen across these areas, I am confident that if momentum is maintained, this goal is within reach.

Agricane, Palladium, and the Soybean Innovation Lab are grateful to the Embassy of Ireland for their ongoing support in legume research and the legume tour