| Sumario: | The Building Equitable Climate-Resilient African Bean and Insect Sectors (BRAINS) project is a multi-country
initiative that aims to create low-carbon, climate-resilient, and inclusive agricultural systems across 15 nations
in sub-Saharan Africa. In Malawi, BRAINS focuses on strengthening the bean, fruit-tree (mango and avocado),
beekeeping and insects-for-food-and-feed value chains while mainstreaming gender equality so that women,
youth and other marginalised groups both participate in and benefit from climate-resilient agricultural
transformation (Kabuli et al., 2025).
Malawi’s agricultural sector remains the backbone of rural lives and national food security but is highly exposed to
climate variability, reflected in periodic droughts, floods and pest outbreaks that impair smallholder production
and incomes (Government of Malawi, 2016a; 2016b). These climatic challenges reinforce longstanding gender
inequalities: women undertake a major share of agricultural labour but generally have less access than men
to land, finance, extension, improved inputs, and high-value market outlets (World Bank, 2024; UN Women/
AfDB, 2020). The BRAINS baseline quantitative analysis conducted in Nkhotakota and Mwanza districts of Malawi
documents these patterns in detail. Men have bigger landholdings and have more access to extension services
and formal market channels, whereas women are disproportionately involved in subsistence production, free
labour, local markets, and have lower digital access for agro-weather information services, limiting their capacity
to adopt climate-smart technologies and to control benefits from these value chains (Kabuli et al., 2025).
Female-headed rural households often lose comparatively more income during catastrophic weather events and
face systemic impediments in obtaining adaptive finance, technologies and information (FAO, 2024). Gender
disparities in land rights and asset ownership also impede women’s ability to invest in long-term, climate-resilient
assets such as perennial fruit trees and beekeeping infrastructure (FAO, 2011; World Bank, 2024). This Malawi
Gender Strategy responds to these challenges by establishing a structured and evidence-based framework for
mainstreaming gender equality and social inclusion throughout all BRAINS activities. It builds on the reach,
benefit, empower, and transform framework to ensure that vulnerable and marginalised groups including women,
youth, persons with disabilities are not only reached by project activities, but also benefit equitably, gain agency,
and contribute to transforming the norms, systems, and institutions that perpetuate inequality.
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