By guest author, Tate Munro,

Palladium's Team Leader, for the Growth Poles Project

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 its advantage into a globally competitive industry?

Over time, as Team Leader for the Palladium Growth Poles Project in Malawi, I have often witnessed smallholder farmers and agribusinesses shift their production to hardy, low-input crops such as sugar beans and groundnuts in order to navigate the interconnected challenges of climate change, water scarcity, declining soil health, rising input costs, and volatile farmgate prices.

The impacts are striking. Malawi’s soybean production has risen dramatically since the early 2000s, making the country Southern Africa’s third-largest producer and a leader in groundnut and common bean production. Factor in its pioneering legume research carried out alongside domestic and international partners and Malawi has a unique opportunity to capitalize on a fast-growing global market.

Popular as a source of plant-based protein alternative, and widely used as an ingredient in the food industry or as a cheap but nutritious animal feed, legumes are now a valuable commodity. Their ability to fix nitrogen and improve soil fertility further drives demand as low-income countries seek to strengthen livelihoods’ resilience and reduce imports of costly inputs.

Yet, while Malawi’s legume cultivation area has expanded exponentially, productivity has plateaued. To press home its advantage and compete globally, the sector urgently needs to modernize.

Turning partnerships into progress

 Combining their 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 to unlock the sector's potential.

SIL, together with Malawi’s Department of Agricultural Research Services and global research institutions such as CIAT, IITA, and ICRISAT, provides improved, more marketable varieties that mature faster, yield more, withstand heat and drought, resist increasingly prevalent crop diseases, and offer better nutrition. The Sangowa Research and Innovation Hub then tests these new crops in real-world environments, trains farmers in new technologies, and collaborates with them to conduct participatory evaluations of cultivars.

Growth Poles, in addition to coordinating the initiative, is building, testing, and strengthening the foundations of a modernized seed system and legume sector, reducing risk and creating greater certainty for private-sector investment and competitive returns. At ground level, Growth Poles is also strengthening value chains through policy, advocacy, and networking initiatives that connect key stakeholders.

Throughout, the private sector is essential to our efforts. In my experience, bankable, profitable ventures are the strongest drivers of investment and growth when impact objectives and values are aligned. The benefits cascade throughout the value chain to smallholders via improved agronomy, inputs, and seed varieties, and to government through job creation, tax revenue, and economic expansion.

Where innovation meets markets

The upcoming Legume Tour in Malawi 2026 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 conditions and investments needed to meet their demand. Beginning at the Sangowa 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 seeds 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 with its partner, the Embassy of Ireland to Malawi, and momentum is building around the partnership initiatives it promotes.

Success in our sights

Together, we are on track to fulfill the goals, but significant barriers remain - not least is water management as growing drought and flood risks make rainfed crop production increasingly unreliable. To tackle this, the Malawian government’s World Bank-funded Shire Valley Transformation Project, for which Agricane has been a key advisor, is bringing 44,000 hectares of agricultural land under irrigation, serving 48,000 households organized by Agricane into farmer cooperatives.

But shifting farmers at scale from rainfed to irrigated agriculture, or from subsistence maize production to commercial production of legumes and other strategic crops, needs to be urgently accelerated through investment and coordination. Meanwhile, to cope with today’s shorter but more intense rainfall events, Central and Northern Malawi require greater efforts in rainwater harvesting and storage.

The Growth Poles Project is also working to build stakeholder confidence and increase uptake of improved varieties through targeted outreach, demonstration farms, and events like the Legume Tour. Directly partnering with leading anchor enterprises that engage farmers, cooperatives, and the government’s Department of Agricultural Research Services (DARS) helps showcase the real-world benefits of new technologies and stronger value chains. This allows the project to overcome slower, conventional adoption cycles and quickly build the interest, trust, and credibility needed for change.

Finally, as production, investment, and potential grow, Malawi needs to put in place consistent and reliable trade and agricultural policies that prioritize exports alongside domestic markets, to boost investor confidence, strengthen food security, and reduce reliance on imports.

Now or never?

Partnerships such as the Sangowa-SIL-Growth Poles initiative, inclusive of smallholder farmers, the private sector, government, and development partners, help to build investor confidence and enable Malawi to turn its advantages in legume production and scientific innovation into a regionally and globally competitive industry. Based on the progress I have seen across these areas, I am confident that by maintaining momentum, this goal is within reach.

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

The 2026 Legume Tour will be held on the 25-27th August in Malawi's Lower Shire Valley and Blantyre