Established in 2012 under the Local Economic Development (LED) project, the Mangochi Business Support Unit (BSU) continues to be cherished by Community Savings and Investment Promotion (COMSIP) groups.

Mr Zimba, the District Community Development Officer for Mangochi District Councils says the BSU is a one stop centre for providing business advisory services in areas of agribusiness, community development and trade to savings and investment groups in Mangochi.

In bid to increase household income levels to the ultra-poor Malawians and help them graduate from poverty, beneficiaries of MASAF IV in Public Works Programme (PWP) and Social Cash Transfers (SCT) under the NLGFC were receiving cash transfers and were encouraged to form savings and investment groups.

Community Savings and Investment Promotion (COMSIP) mobilised beneficiaries of PWP and SCT into groups to provide for its linkage to the Livelihoods and skills development component of MASAF IV.

The idea behind the COMSIP groups was to instil the savings and investment culture among Malawians. BSU supports these groups through many business advisory services since the onset of the group formation.

In his remarks, the Agribusiness officer, Kondwani Nyengo said that BSU takes a networked approach of combining expertise in trade, agribusiness and community development in order to provide comprehensive business advisory and development services at the Local Council and communities.

“As BSU, our areas of focus in general, is to provide business advisory services to groups in business community, distilling best practice among the business community, capacity building , market linkages and helping business groups to have access to finance”

Speaking to this Newsletter,  NLGFC’s Enterprise Development Specialist, Mirriam Saiwa says, it is the expectation of the NLGFC to see savings and investment groups running smoothly with support in areas of financial literacy, business management, record keeping, agribusiness, nutrition, health and sanitation. Saiwa says the progressive evidence based social economic transformation of the project is impressive.

In total, Mangochi Business Support Unit benefits 120 savings and investment groups.