Our Programmes
The following are some of our Programmes
Tiwatukule through Skills for Development
The Tiwatukule Project represents a significant step towards empowering ultra-poor households in Dedza and Ntcheu districts, spearheaded by the African Institute of Corporate Citizenship AICC) in partnership with FARMSE and supported financially by IFAD. Over the course of the next two years, the Tiwatukule Project aims to address the vulnerabilities faced by ultra-poor households that are often excluded from mainstream development programs. At the heart of the Tiwatukule Project is a commitment to a uniquely targeted, time-bound, and holistic approach. Through rigorous implementation, the project seeks to uplift these households onto sustainable pathways out of extreme poverty, fostering not just economic stability but also social empowerment and community integration.
AICC's Tiwatukule Project utilises caseworkers who are strategically based at the community level. These caseworkers play a vital role in the successful implementation of the project, working closely with ultra-poor households to provide tailored support and guidance throughout the project period. The Tiwatukule Project is built upon four key pillars, carefully designed to address the multifaceted challenges of poverty while remaining adaptable to diverse contexts. These pillars include social protection, livelihood promotion, financial inclusion, and social empowerment.
Social protection mechanisms are put in place to ensure basic income security through interventions such as consumption support, crisis relief, and access to essential services like health and education. Livelihood promotion initiatives aim to secure regular and diverse income streams for households, with a particular emphasis on empowering women through skills training, asset transfers, and market linkages. Financial inclusion efforts are geared towards enhancing income and risk management by providing access to formal or informal financial services, complemented by financial literacy training. Meanwhile, social empowerment activities focus on equipping families with the mindset and skills necessary for positive behaviour change and community inclusion, underpinned by a commitment to gender equality.
As the Tiwatukule Project unfolds over the next two years, it is anticipated that participating ultra-poor households will begin to emerge from the depths of poverty, leading safe, secure, and stable lives with renewed hope for the future. Through the collaborative efforts of AICC, FARMSE, and IFAD, the Tiwatukule Project seeks not only to alleviate poverty but to create a lasting impact by empowering individuals and communities to thrive independently.
Resilient and Sustainable Livelihood Transformation Project(RESULT)
Focus
- Effective, Equitable and Just Food Systems
- Sustainable Livelihoods
- Organization Strengthening
- Women and men, the youth, people living with HIV and Aids, people with physical disabilities and all other vulnerable households categorized as ultra-poor with low cost technologies aimed at increasing their resilience against food and nutrition insecurity but also to gradually graduate into self-reliance.
- AICC aims to implement interventions towards developing effective and just food systems and Sustainable Livelihoods through strengthening the Rice multi-stakeholder partnerships (with specific focus on Women and youth)
- AICC will adopt the value chain development approach to examine the way value is created and captured not only by rights holders, but also by other stakeholders, including workers, government and consumers.
- The innovative participatory multi-sector approach will also be employed to focus on market-driven value chains with women farmer organizations and proven climate smart practices to transform rural livelihoods from subsistence to sustainable business-oriented enterprises that
- Through the Rice Value Chain, the project will engage the technical working groups to lobby for a conducive environment for farmers to thrive and graduate out of poverty while ensuring that women have access to water and land tenure rights in their respective schemes.
Women Economic Empowerment in the Cotton Value Chain (WEECVC)
The Women Economic Empowerment for Cotton Value Chain Project (WEE CVC) is a two year project whose overall objective is to increase gender equality and empowerment of 9600 women and youth in the cotton sub-sector in Malawi. The project’s specific objectives are increasing the availability of, accessibility to and utilisation of productive resources, financial services and extension services among women and youth in the cotton value chain; reducing vulnerability and increasing resilience to negative environmental and climatic changes impacting smallholder cotton farmers and ensuring that women and female youth fully participate in and are able to meaningfully influence decision making processes in the cotton sub-sector at local, national and regional levels. The WEECVC project is being implemented in Namkumba EPA in Mangochi, Chipoka nd Chingulwe EPA in Salima and Rivirivi EPA in Balaka targeting smallholder women and youth cotton farmers and the cotton value chain players.
SMART Climate Project
This is a 2 Year project aimed at strengthening the rice value chain through a joint implementation to enhance resilience to CLIMATE change. In a consortium approach, the SMART CLIMATE project is been implemented in Karonga and Nkhotakota districts. In this project the Rice Development Trust is mandated to improve the management, networking, marketing and access to credit capabilities of rice cooperatives with particular attention to women and people with disabilities in the two districts.
Malawi Agricultural Partnership
The Malawi Agricultural Partnership (MAP) programme is one of the key programmes implemented by AICC. MAP has been supported by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) since 2009. The MAP programme enables the private sector to establish a multi-stakeholder platform with the goal of improving food security in Malawi and increasing profitability of smallholder farmers.MAP has facilitated the establishment of several public-private sector partnerships that provide commercial and developmental support to sustainable and profitable smallholder agriculture in Malawi. The following are some projects under MAP:
>Cotton Platform
>Rice Platform
>Legumes Platform
>Sustainable Agribusiness Initiative
>E-Voucher
African Approach to Corporate Citizenship
AICC is currently implementing a continental programme called African Approach to Corporate Citizenship. From the perspective of AICC, Corporate Citizenship refers to all the impacts that business enterprises have on society and the influences that affect the business institutional processes (the policies, legal and ethical frameworks that society adopts to license, govern and regulate business conduct) the mechanisms for organizing and managing the production of wealth; and the procedures for holding to account all types of business enterprises regardless of whether or not they are incorporated, formal or informal.
In African societies, it was the common good that inspired the creation of economic, legal, political, and social systems for enhancing the well-being of people in a community. In turn, and because it is the individual human being as a member of society that matters and counts most, all the individuals and the institutions in the community have moral obligations, commitments, duties and roles to be fulfilled in pursuit of the common good for each and every member. This is to ensure that the desires of every member of the community to attain the deserved peace, security, freedom, dignity, respect, justice, equality, and satisfaction are achieved.
The objectives of the programme is to build and strengthen the continental capacity and capability to adopt, promote, apply and implement the highest standards of corporate citizenship based on the African approach (at continental, regional, national, community and corporate levels) through:
>Research and development programmes that aim at the development, enhancement, refinement and improvement of methods, principles, and codes of best practice in corporate citizenship in all sectors of the economy; on how best to evaluate and assess the impact of good corporate citizenship practices on the wealth creation capacity of countries and the quality of life of citizens. It also seeks to develop appropriate methods for institutional networking as would promote partnerships for progress between the public sector, the private sector and the civil society to enhance better understanding of the role of business in society and corporate citizenship.
>Training and education targeting development of training materials, testing and validation of the training materials and training of a critical core of trainers to train government officials, directors and officers of corporations, civil society organizations activists in the relevant aspects of responsible corporate citizenship in consultation with institutions of higher learning and professional associations.
>Establishment of a data bank, resource and knowledge centre on corporate citizenship to serve as a depository, dissemination and networking centre on all matters relevant to corporate citizenship-– competitive excellence, governance, responsibility and sustainability- initiatives in Africa and with other regional and global initiatives including through electronically accessible dynamic and interactive website.
>Communication and advocacy programmes that would motivate, influence and otherwise excite the public sector, civil society and policy makers to understand the benefits of responsible corporate citizenship and otherwise excite and incite the people of Africa to actively demand the implementation and application of the highest standards of corporate citizenship for the greatest benefit for the people of Africa.
>Partnership and collaborative programmes with like minded institutions, development agencies and collaborative partners to facilitate implementation of the highest standards of corporate citizenship based on the African approach to ensure the sustainable creation, management and distribution of wealth for the greatest benefit for the people of Africa.
>Strengthening the institutional capacity, competence and capability of AICC to put in place appropriate mechanisms to promote implementation of responsible corporate citizenship based on the African approach in the whole of Africa.
Strategies of the Programme
The programme has four main components; namely
>Working to bring together key continental players {from the public & private sectors and civil society} and development partners interested in the implementation of good corporate citizenship in Africa to facilitate agreement on an African approach and the priorities of the continent; and to seek agreement on the technical and financial support necessary to ensure that those priorities are addressed in the implementation process and so as to build sustainable capacity to do so. This will involve
- Agreement on a framework to facilitate the coordinated implementation of harmonized standards of corporate citizenship in Africa through collaboration, cooperation and consultation;
- Agreement and establishment of a catalytic policy think tank (continental platform) to facilitate implementation of harmonized corporate citizenship standards that respond to the needs of the continent, promote continental integration, encourage coordinated, collaborative & consultative programs;
- Strengthening the technical and professional capacity of the AICC enabling it efficiently and effectively play its role as the Continental Centre for corporate citizenship through;
- Procurement and deployment of key critical resources- human, financial, technological, reputational -;
- Putting in place appropriate governance and management structures and practices with enhanced planning, coordination and management capacity as will make it gain global recognition, reputation and image as the efficient, effective and technically competent institute that spearheads responsible corporate citizenship in Africa.
- Facilitating the development, formulation and design-through diagnostic and design methodological approaches-of generic toolkits and procedures -that analyze the constraints to, problems and limitations experienced by business enterprises in the creation of wealth, corporate competitiveness, corporate governance, social accountability, and enhanced sustainability in Africa-; generic solutions, standards and programmesthat are practical and appropriate to the needs and circumstances of Africa in order to form the basis upon which to embark on a harmonized and coordinated approach in the implementation of responsible corporate citizenship in Africa based on the African Approach.
- Facilitating the implementation and application of the harmonized and coordinated standards through collaborative programs to build institutional and technical capacities at the national and sub-regional levels enabling the respective nations or sub-regions adapt the generic guidelines
Anticipated Benefits
It is anticipated that over the next five-year period to 31st March 2019, the following outputs would be generated: A critical mass of skilled and committed professionals- knowledgeable in the principles, practices and benefits of corporate citizenship based on the African approach within the public and private sectors and civil society -built through rigorous training and education programmes, workshops, seminars and conferences. Development of simplified and harmonized framework that integrates the various strands of corporate citizenship competitive excellence, corporate governance, responsive responsibility, corporate and environmental sustainability -into an understandable and usable instrument for policy makers, corporate boards, leaders of civil society organizations and other community leaders. A continental team of qualified and competent trained trainers to undertake training, build skills and knowledge in good corporate citizenship. A range of training materials and manuals, toolkits, compendium of codes and case studies developed for use by trainers, consultants, evaluators, researchers and regulators, others involved in training, promotion, implementing, regulating and policing good corporate citizenship Detailed reports from case studies and policy studies, highlighting good and bad citizenship practices in public and private corporations, cooperatives, municipal corporations, and not-for-profit organizations to serve the needs of researchers and development practitioners as well as individuals interested in matters relating to responsible corporate citizenship in Africa. Development of mechanisms, criteria and systems for the identification, evaluation, monitoring and reporting on good corporate citizenship Established and strengthened a regional pool of experts and institution networking to facilitate the flow and sharing of information and experiences on practice of corporate citizenship within the sub- region and the continent Development of an interactive website and the setting up of continental resource/referral centre and data base on corporate citizenship in Africa. Developed and putting in place operational partnerships and platforms between public, private and civil society institutions for the efficient and sustainable creation, responsible management and equitable sharing of wealth based on responsible corporate citizenship and social accountability in Africa. Established a well-equipped coordinating secretariat staffed by competent professionals recruited on a competitive basis to address capacity needs for the effective implementation of the principles, standards and practices of good corporate citizenship in Africa. AICC will play a leading role in ensuring the coordinated and harmonized development and implementation of responsible Corporate Citizenship based on the African Approach in Africa
Governance & Advisory
Agribusiness Accelerate Initiative
Acess to Markets
Sustainable Cotton for Women and Youth Empowerment (SCOWOYE)
Commercial Agribusiness for Sustainable Horticulture (CASH)
Tingathe Spotlight Initiative for Women and Adolescent Girls