ANALYSIS OF MUSA PROCESSING BUSINESSES AND THEIR SUPPORT ENVIRONMENT IN MALAWI

An analysis of Musa processing businesses and their support environment in Malawi was carried out in 2005 by a national team with various expertise and experiences. The study aimed to identify all banana-based (Musa spp.) products on the market including processing and marketing procedures. The other aim was to profile all the small-scale Musa processing businesses including their support service providers. Results revealed that there are a lot of informal businesses related to Musa like wine, snack, handcraft and paper making, and drying of ripe bananas. The manufacturing industry is using bananas as a flavoring ingredient. However, these are being faced with a lot of challenges and hence need support from other key players like financial, technology development and training institutions, and organizations that supply inputs for production and packaging. Business information and services are available, though not readily to end users. This entails that the potential for up scaling of small-scale Musa processing businesses is possible as long as there is creation of an enabling environment where all the concerned stakeholders have one goal. The emergence of small-scale Musa processing businesses has led to an improvement in rural livelihoods as evidenced by the fact that most of the groupings are moving towards being more organized and self-sufficient in their operations by constructing their own buildings and purchasing modern equipment. This is more evident with a project initiated by the World Agroforestry Center on the domestication of indigenous fruit trees which has now grown into a potentially lucrative banana-based business.