Malawi’s smallholder farming communities face escalating climate shocks, due mainly to their high sensitivity to climate impacts and low adaptive capacity.
The three-year Climate Just Communities (CJC) Malawi project addressed community needs through a hybrid model that combined integrated rural development for climate resilience with a market systems approach.
This briefing presents the main findings from the project’s endline evaluation, which found that the CJC project generated many improved outcomes, including increased organic fertiliser adoption, improved annual maize yield through better irrigation, and greater women’s economic empowerment and financial inclusion due to village savings and loans associations. Climate shock exposure among project households also fell measurably.
Key recommendations include extending project cycles to five years, prioritising depth over breadth in implementation and strengthening shock-proofing and livelihood risk reduction measures.
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Available at https://www.iied.org/22740iied