Work with CNFA

So... first things first. Who, or what is CNFA? CNFA is an NGO (non-governmental organization) that is working to promote the presence and success of agro-dealers in Malawi. An agro-dealer is a business person who sells seeds, fertilizer, and herbicides (in any combination) to rural farmers. The idea behind the project is that the use of hybrid seeds (rather than locally produced, and often recycled seeds), fertilizer, and herbicides will boost the yields of the rural farmer and make them food secure. In fact, last year the government subsidized fertilizer for all farmers in Malawi and the country had a food surplus for the first time in many years. CNFA's work in this area is key because agro-dealers provide the link between big commercial suppliers and rural farmers.

(small disclaimer: CNFA stands for Citizen's Network for Foreign Affairs but no one here ever uses the full name so I won't either.)

What am I doing at CNFA? Glad you asked! My official title is Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) coordinator. I'm working with two other people on M&E. Our current job is to review the current system and suggest areas for improvement. The new M&E system will be used both to feed information back to the project donors and to help improve decision making within CNFA. One of my co-workers is also new to the project and specializes in GIS (geographic information systems). Part of the new system will be to generate a map of all of the locations of the agro-dealers. This map will be used to improve market knowledge and get more information to the input supply companies. Already, I've been up to all sorts of exciting activities with CNFA... but I'll save that goodness for the next post.

Thanks for reading!