Agwenda Investment Limited
Established in 2012, Agwenda Investment Limited focuses on the production and supply to the end market of quails, and indigenous and dual-purpose breed chickens. Operating in Lilongwe and Nkhotakota with five employees, the Managing Director is Sungeni Ng’onamo, who has a BSc in Agribusiness, an MBA in Project Management, and over ten years of experience managing projects.
Facilitating Investment, Aggregation, and Offtaking of Indigenous Poultry Products
The project demonstrates the viability of a low entry cost smallholder supply chain with an agri-SME: start small and grow.
This 24-month project (July 2022 – June 2024) supported Agwenda in establishing an out-grower scheme with 1,694 smallholder farmers, mostly women and youth, and facilitating access to inputs on a credit arrangement whereby chicks are distributed and repaid in eggs for Agwenda to hatch for future distributions. By the end of the project Agwenda had delayed offtaking chicken from out-growers for the purpose of giving them room to grow their flocks since only two chickens were acquired by each individual. Some farmers however have started selling surplus eggs. Agwenda was further supported on introduction of Black Soldier Fly (BSF) maggots as a low-cost protein for poultry feed. An additional 1,466 farmers were identified in Dowa and trained in BSF production to develop a future source of raw materials for Agwenda to become a commercial feed processor.
Of the total project cost of £81,840, CASA provided £67,600 worth of technical assistance and a grant, some of which went towards preparing Agwenda to attract commercial or impact investment to expand its business operations. However, to date Agwenda has not succeeded in attracting finance due to the difficulties of Malawi’s economic environment. Agwenda currently seeks £61,184 from third party investors to acquire and install chicken houses, brooding facilities, water supply, warehouse facilities, incubator, hatcher, deep freezer, processing equipment (plucker) and van for transportation of products.
Updated: July 2025