Our Lives Our Land Programme

Under-utilisation of land is reducing food security and income levels as the missed potential of production opportunities in fertile areas leads to an over reliance on single-crop production and lack of diversity into other livelihoods. Our ongoing research over 20 years has indicated that 75% of school children from economically insecure households had no food for breakfast. Under-nourished children are more likely to suffer from poor health and school absences. A lack of land rights, limited access to agricultural technologies and limited funds to buy tools, machinery, fertilizers or seeds has reduced the capacity of local smallholders to maximise yields and increase profit. Poor crop yields also means a lack of income for many subsistence producers. Many of these families struggle to pay the costs of education for their children. 

The Mango Tree has funded projects that support around 5,000 parents and guardians of orphans and young people in Kenya and Malawi to assist them in developing more diverse and sustainable livelihoods. These include tangerine tree production, goat breeding, community aquaculture, mango tree grafting, cassava, maize and banana production. These projects are enabling those families most at risk of remaining trapped in poverty to expand farm production, trial new seed varieties and appropriate technology, and gain more agricultural and animal husbandry knowledge. This has led to greater crop yields and more farm surplus, improving household food security and family nutrition. 

This year (2022) marks the expansion of our sustainable livelihoods’ funding into Southern Malawi with a new Our Lives Our Land project being delivered by TMT Malawi. The project builds on our ‘Wezesha’ livelihoods project, combining sustainable livelihoods work with educational objectives to build the capacity of vulnerable families so that they can afford to cost of education and reduce barriers preventing disadvantaged children from enrolling and remaining in school. Activities include, means tested bursaries, extra tuition, sanitary towel awareness and distribution and sexual health education. 

This project includes a participatory Farmer’s Field School extension programme will empower caregivers to grow enough food for subsistence and agribusiness and help them establish farmers co-operatives. Through collective collaboration, cooperative members will develop a range of agribusiness such as goat breeding, pig keeping beekeeping and poultry keeping. We will continue to provide livelihoods inputs, training and capacity building support through farming extension programs, marketing support and loan schemes.

Wezesha is a Swahili word that means “enable” and this project expands our sustainable livelihoods projects into the rural areas of Mwanza, Neno, Chikwawa and Nsanje Districts. This southern region of Malawi has the country’s highest number of families living in extreme poverty, so our project will benefit single parent families and households with large numbers of dependents, those caring for orphans, albino or disabled children, single parent households, and those living with long-term health issues such as HIV.  

The project, which started in 2019, is asset-led and builds on existing resources and skills to ensure local ownership and sustainable outcomes. It aims to help those living in poverty rediscover their own local resources for economic empowerment by supporting ideas and solutions through our Farmer’s Field School extension training. This empowers community members to grow enough food for both subsistence and agribusiness and establish their own Cooperative Society. Through collective collaboration, the cooperative members will initiate and co-ordinate the management of a range of agribusiness activities. It also supports the improvement of land-based livelihoods and increases household income, with farming extension programmes for higher yields, marketing of farm produce and loan schemes.

From 2015 to 2021, we funded The Mango Tree Kenya’s Sustainable Aquaculture Project to support fishing livelihoods through reclaiming sand mine gullies and constructing lined fishponds for tilapia production. The project resulted in increased food security and raised income levels, making significant improvements to the local ecology and empowering disadvantaged single-parent women who are vulnerable to sexual exploitation. Fish farmers were encouraged to invest some of their profits back into their farms and have become visibly more resilient and independent. Ponds continue to generate an average annual income of KSH30,000 (£250) and 90% of families in the project put these funds towards education costs for their children.