An idea hatched from purpose: this poultry farm is empowering women smallholders

Every day on her way to primary school in Blantyre, a young Thoko carried a bag filled with a nutritious breakfast — one she often shared with friends, many of whom could afford only one meal a day. It was memory that stayed with her, especially as little seemed to change over time.

In Zomba, where she took university studies, she saw food insecurity in many households. Students spoke of ‘scavengers’, desperate mothers and children searching through garbage bins looking for scraps of food to eat daily.

For Thoko, these experiences became impossible to ignore. They strengthened her determination to act.

“I’m the kind of person who doesn’t wait for someone to do something when I feel that, with the little I have, I can intervene,” says Thoko, who has long since dedicated her career towards helping people in need.

At the many train stations she passed through, Thoko saw women carrying baskets of produce to sell to passing travellers. In conversations with them, she was struck by how little they earned — vegetables were often sold at painfully low prices, leaving many struggling to make a living.

“When I did my calculations, I knew there were some losses,” Thoko recounts. In Malawi, more so than men, female-headed households are deeply vulnerable to food access and resources. “That made me want to start something with the aim of empowering women.”

Her efforts started with just ten female farmers. She made it a point to learn about their specific needs and challenges, most of which revolved around a lack of awareness — be it about climate-smart agriculture, opportunities to access financing, or how to access to profitable markets. Determined to change this, Thoko set out to equip the women with the tools and support they needed to succeed.

Focussed interventions and better operations to reach more farmers

Despite its purpose-driven mission, Tac-Maz struggled to reach a wider network of farmers, a challenge Thoko mainly attributed to operational deficiencies. Things changed when CASA’s Malawi-based market manager Mercy Butao approached Thoko. In late 2024, CASA began to support the company’s poultry business so they could raise and distribute chicks to 2,400 smallholders.

But then there was a setback, a big one.

“When CASA’s team leader Steve Morris came for a monitoring visit, we shared our challenge of not making much progress because of the fuel shortages and intermittent electricity supply in Malawi,” says Thoko. “We had thrown away more than 9,000 eggs and lost over 4,000 chicks. The chicks we had were losing weight … and I felt like we shouldn't proceed with CASA."

Trusting in the business’ potential, the CASA team nevertheless continued engaging Tac-Maz with capacity building and integrated grant financing into the model. This allowed Thoko to mobilise farmer groups — today Tac-Maz works with 60 farmer cooperatives — and invest in a solar system to power two incubators with a capacity of 3,300 eggs.

By mid-2025, Tac-Maz achieved strong outcomes: with the aid of the solar system, it managed to supply 4,200 chicks to smallholders and even raised 1,657 chickens. However, this targeted intervention was only a snapshot of the guidance CASA gave the business. For Thoko, what she appreciated about the programme was how it improved the way they worked.

“When CASA came in, they didn't change our model, not in any way. They only enhanced it to be more systemic and more well-structured,” Thoko says, adding that such was a tremendous highlight for the business.

Specifically, CASA helped Tac-Maz develop its policies, such as a gender-based policy and anti-fraud policy, to make them more compliant with due diligence, and therefore more investment-ready.

Tac-Maz's visibility has since soared. During their engagement with CASA, the business reached 1,244 farmers, 85% of whom were women. They also expanded to districts outside of Chiradzulu, where the business used to solely operate. It is what Thoko has always envisioned for Tac-Maz.

But beyond business targets, Thoko is equally proud of the support that Tac-Maz has extended to smallholder farmers who used to struggle with poultry farming due to challenges such as disease outbreaks among chickens.

With Tac-Maz's capacity-building efforts, alongside CASA’s help, Thoko shares that these farmers learned to take better care of the chickens. The training enabled farmers to generate between MWK 15,000 and MWK 20,000 (about €8-10) per chicken.

In the future, Thoko hopes to extend outreach to more farmers. She is gearing up to apply for a grant that would build a facility where she can expand chick and feed production. She also has many other goals for Tac-Maz, all of them with the aim of uplifting farmers.

“My vision for Tac-Maz is for it to reach the point where a farmer can come in at any point to look for chicks or feed, and we will be there as a steward that can make those things available any time,” Thoko says.