Women farmers forced to pay K30,000 just to sell tobacco — as Kabwafu closure bites

Malawi's Minister of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development Rozza Fatchi Mbilizi has thrown her weight behind a proposal to reopen the long-closed Kabwafu Auction Floors, pledging swift action after hearing harrowing accounts of the hardship faced by tobacco farmers in the area.

The Minister made the commitment in Parliament on Monday, responding to a question from Aeckim Kumwenda, MP for Mzimba West, who pressed government on whether it would consider reopening the floors — closed since 2018 — given their importance to tobacco marketing, job creation and the wider economy in the flue-cured tobacco-growing region of Mzimba.

Kumwenda painted a bleak picture of the fallout from the closure, telling Parliament that an entire community which had settled around Kabwafu specifically to work at the auction floors had since been left with nothing to do — deepening poverty in the area.

"There is a community there which has settled basically because they had come to work at the auction floors, and they are lying idle and it's contributing negatively to their socioeconomic status," he said.

Women farmers forced to pay eye-watering sums just to sell their crop

The MP revealed that the burden has fallen hardest on women, who make up the majority of farmers in the area, and who now face a costly and exhausting journey all the way to Mzuzu just to sell their tobacco.

"Most farmers in the area are women, and transporting tobacco all the way to Mzuzu for sale is costly. It is quite a mammoth task for them to travel all the way to go and watch the sale of their tobacco at Mzuzu. Imagine it would cost them K30,000 plus one way. The traveling costs diminish their profits which are already small," he explained.

Kumwenda also warned of a worrying knock-on effect of the floors' closure — with farmers increasingly turning to smuggling their tobacco across the border into neighbouring Zambia simply because they have no nearby market to sell it legally.

He urged the ministry to move quickly to engage major tobacco buyers operating in the area, including Limbe Leaf, Alliance One and JTI, all of which contract flue-cured tobacco growers in the region.

Minister promises to act "soon" — but no firm timeline given

Responding to the MP's plea, Mbilizi said she was keen to address the issue and pledged to engage relevant stakeholders soon to chart a way forward — though she stopped short of offering a firm timeline for when the floors might reopen, or how quickly relief might reach the struggling farming community.