Lilongwe, Malawi
Thank you so much, Pam [Fessenden]. Thank you Ambassador [David] Young and Ron [Ngwira] and [inaudible] and everyone else here, it is really wonderful to be here. And as Pam mentioned, I am straight off the plane from Dar es Salaam, from the African Food Systems Forum – it brings together thousands of people, I've heard there were 5,000 people there this year. And the whole conversation is about how to increase productivity in Africa, and there are people talking about seeds. I actually had dinner last night with all of these seed producers who were talking about aflatoxins, and then fertilizer companies and infrastructure companies about moving goods, and all different technical services, everything. And I come off the plane here in Malawi, and I'm seeing everything in action. So it really is amazing to me, to see this incredible facility, and everything that you're doing there. And I really am so proud and pleased to be part of this MOU signing.
You know, small agribusiness truly is the backbone of economic growth – we know that – across the continent of Africa. And so increasing agricultural productivity is the way to increase incomes, and to decrease poverty in countries across the continent, including in Malawi. It is without a doubt an economic engine. And the key to moving from subsistence agriculture towards commercially sustainable industry that is critical for lifting people out of poverty, out of hunger, and to really move forward for the whole community.
So the private sector is absolutely essential to this. And so this is a wonderful public-private partnership that we have here at this MOU signing. But it is the private sector that is the engine of job creation, nine out of 10 jobs in the world have been created by the private sector. It's also the driving force behind innovation. And today, the private sector represents 90 percent of financial flows to developing countries. So what we, at USAID, do – we help on the margins, we try to jumpstart, we try to catalyze. But at the end of the day, it really is the private sector that has the scale and the resources to match the complexity of challenges and it's companies like Pyxus, that are helping us write a new chapter here today.
Through the U.S. government's Feed the Future Initiative, we've seen how partnering with private sector partners in places like Malawi can boost development for everyone in the country. And through the agricultural diversification activity, AgDiv, that was referred to earlier, USAID has been working with Pyxus to help smallholder farmers access high quality inputs for groundnut farming. And the numbers that Ron ran me through earlier about how farmers are able to use these seeds to increase yields, to increase profits, to reinvest in their fields, and keep growing – it's really inspirational, and I look forward to coming back in five years and seeing a tremendous growth of many farmers.
Ron mentioned a couple of examples earlier, I have one here of a farmer, Mchichizana Bekelani from Kasiya, who was able to improve her groundnut yields and increase her household income. She couldn't afford to purchase seeds, so she was planting groundnuts recycled from previous harvests. And as a result of the partnership with Pyxus, she was able to access more disease-resistant groundnut seeds and produce higher yields. And, you know, to just see this in action – this is a story that must be replicated over and over again, for the continent of Africa. Not only to feed itself but to become, what I think is not a pipe dream in any means, but to be a breadbasket for the world. And I really do believe that it's possible.
The partnership we've launched today, with USAID and Pyxus, will invest in Malawians to accelerate opportunities for more sustainable, inclusive, and resilient economic growth. And the production, the processing, it's all happening here and it provides a tremendous model for the new Growth Poles project, which is going to partner with 25 private sector companies around Malawi to turn rural communities into engines of economic growth.
So what you're seeing here today is but one of these Poles, and there'll be many others replicated across the country – these investments will help Malawian farmers improve soil health – so important, you will keep hearing that. This was such an important topic yesterday about really fixing the soil. And from speaking with Ron earlier, one of the byproducts of the groundnut production here is that it's making the other crops, farmers are feeling better, because it's fixing the nitrogen in the soil. I think you said it was an unanticipated benefit of how much that's increasing yields on the others. And it's really going to explicitly focus on women and youth smallholder farmers. This means more income for farmers, more availability of nutritious food, and reductions in non-nutrition and increases in economic growth, decreases in poverty.
The U.S. government's investment of $14.5 million or over $15 billion Malawian Kwacha will help scale up access to input loans for high quality seed, expand markets for groundnut farmers, and spur production of high value varieties that are in demand in international markets. So this partnership is part of a whole process that we've got, it's called AIM4Climate, where we have these innovation sprints. And it has come out of that, it was launched earlier this year with Irish Aid and we have Mark Montgomery here someplace. So thank you, Mark, and other private sector partners to make food systems more climate resilient, and equip local communities with the tools to produce and consume more nutritious foods.
So I know that we are excited about replicating this, seeing the results over time. And again, I just thank you for being here today. And I just so enjoyed the opportunity to wonk out this morning on agriculture here at Pyxus and look forward to seeing all of your tremendous success. So thank you.