Menesia Muinjo

Malawi has put an end to subsidy coupon fraud by using farmers to hand them out to those who really need them.

Malawi’s food production programme has been praised as a huge success in Africa and earned that country’s president and his government the Food Agriculture Natural Resources and Policy Network’s (FANRPAN) inaugural Food Policy Award in 2008.

However, like with other large programmes, there are always chance-takers who want to enrich themselves and benefit at the expense of the poor by stealing the subsidies from those who need them most.

But the strict measures applied by Malawi’s government mostly put an end to this abuse of the system and minimised coupon forgery.

Civil Society Agriculture Network’s national coordinator Victor Monhi said there were a number of loopholes that allowed illegible people to steal the coupons during the initial stages of the programme.

He added that these were identified and government was active in improving the administration process over the past five years.

“One of the loopholes was detected within the registration process,” he said.

Some people falsely registered themselves for the coupons, others created numerous false identities and some mistakenly registered an incorrect name of their village.

The latter meant that when distributors went to these villages to hand over the subsidies, the beneficiaries did not live there. The distributers have been largely accused of taking the coupons for their own benefit.

Government, through the private partnership, tried its best to minimise forgery. But it was not easy to trace a subsidy coupon or a maize bag in villages without telephones.

Spokesperson in the Ministry of Agriculture in Malawi, Jerome Nkoma, attributed the success of the subsidy distribution programme to many factors including: government commitment to make money available; and the involvement of the private sector in planning the distribution and for overseeing the programme.

He said the programme was also successful because the farmers set the criteria to identify those who needed the coupons.

“Once coupons were stolen, government was able to take corrective measures quickly which helped with planning,” said Nkoma.

Nkoma also said the physical structures of the coupons have now been changed to make it difficult for forgers by using a blue torchlight to identify if indeed a particular coupon is valid.

While agreeing that there were “minor problems” in the coupons distribution process, he said this had something to do with personalities. Meaning that minimal incidents of coupon stealing took place where there was weak leadership. “But in most cases, the problems were detected before distribution which ensured that the beneficiaries received their subsidies,” he said.

Subsidy coupon distribution management – especially when it comes to drought food hand-outs – has been a concern in many African countries. Malawi’s successful coupon distribution programme can help put an end to this trend in Africa.

The topic of subsidy distributions for farmers is one of the key discussions at the FANRFAN’s Policy Dialogue meeting taking place in Maputo, Mozambique this week.