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About
our pilot scheme
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We
have invested over £2 million of our own money into the pilot
scheme to consider two key issues:
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could investment in commercial agriculture in a sub-Saharan
African country generate profit? | | | (ii)
could investment establish a sustainable solution to poverty
reduction, focusing on the rural areas which are noted
internationally as the heart of African poverty? |
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The
agricultural base of our pilot scheme
We have successfully developed a strong
proprietary farming base that operates from both the central
and northern regions of Malawi. We have also established
a significant outgrower scheme – this involves families
taking seed and fertiliser from us, growing a crop on their
own land and then selling the resultant harvest back to
us. We have some 2,000 hectares of arable land under our
control and a further 4,000 hectares of land under our outgrower
scheme. | The
2008 financial forecasts of our pilot scheme
Our forecast returns on capital from our current commercial
agriculture production base is between 30% - 40%*. This
is a very heartening forecast, helping prove the investment
case for commercial agriculture in Africa and thus increasing
the argument for massive increases in investment into this
sector of her economy. This forecast does NOT include any
uplift in the value of our farms, nor from investment into
allied food processing and we believe these issues to be
highly positive to the outlook for overall returns.
* Source: Africa Invest Malawi Limited /
cru Investment Management plc |
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| Our
social programmes |
We have continually focused on and insisted that our commitment
to poverty reduction is an absolute. Without this we would never
have invested in the first place. In respect of our £2million
pilot scheme our profit motive was only to prove the investment
case, on the basis that this will then attract further investment
and by multiplication of investment schemes the future of Africa
will improve substantially. As we continually stress, giving
has failed Africa whereas investment can transform her.
We now have over 2,000 employees, over 8,000 families participating
in our outgrower schemes and 1,700 children and elderly in our
feeding programmes. Malawi family units typically represent
10 family members and therefore our pilot scheme impacts positively
on an estimated 83,000 people.
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We
have created one of the most ethical investments | Against
a backdrop of desperate poverty, we have established operational
practice that forces back
poverty and provides sustainable financial improvement to thousands
of Malawians.
Our overall social goals and objectives are to improve sustainable
livelihoods of rural communities by building on
their capacities and reducing vulnerabilities through:
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• | provision
of mass employment to immediately access means of earning
money | |
• | provision
of greater security and availability of year round employment
through irrigation, allowing for
two to three crop programmes per annum | |
• | establishing
feeding programmes in the villages next to our farms to
provide a nutritional porridge seven
days a week to highly vulnerable people, such as orphan
children, the very elderly and HIV sufferers | |
• | the
establishment of a micro-economy built around cash, rather
than mere sustainable existence | |
• | at
village level and in conjunction with the NGO community,
to strive to fulfill all millennium goal
objectives as agreed by the United Nations within 24 months
of one of our farms being established. |
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Our
commitment to poverty alleviation is fundamental
to our business development.
The outcome of a successful £120million fund
raising for Malawi we estimate to be as follows: | |
• | over
26,000 people employed | |
• | over
100,000 families in outgrower schemes | |
• | over
22,000 vulnerables in our feeding programmes. | |
Taken
together this investment will financially impact
and benefit circa 1.3 million people, 9% of the
entire population of Malawi. |
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