News that one has reached the finish line in receiving free entitlements has never been accorded with a happy reception, more so when the entitlement is anything to do with money.

However, be that as it may, some ex-social cash transfer beneficiaries in Dedza District have gone a long mile to set standards in preparing and accepting that they have finally graduated from the poverty through social cash transfer.

Archangel Chimkwapulo, 70, of Chioza Village, Traditional Authority Kaphuka in Dedza, became a beneficiary of the money transfer scheme in 2017.

Over the past four years, he has been working on upgrading his household’s living conditions, claiming that his goal has always been to graduate from the programme and give a chance to others to also benefit from it.

He says: “On the onset of the programme, we were told that this was not going to be a permanent arrangement, as such, we were encouraged to be working towards attaining economic independence so that if the programme was going to phase out, we should be self-reliant.”

Given a chance, every beneficiary of the social cash transfer programme wants to remain in the programme, but this is not the path that the programme would like to take.

In the past few years, the Malawi Government introduced a graduation programme meant to assist beneficiaries who have been in the programme for at least four years to see their way out, especially having attained a certain level of sustainable economic independence.

Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Welfare director of social welfare Welfare Laurent Kansinjiro said households that do not qualify to benefit from the programme are exited while new ones are enrolled at the same time.

He says: “So, there are two main ways of exiting beneficiary households, one is the administrative graduation in which every four years we undertake a retargeting.

“Through this exercise, some households are found to no longer need assistance and they are exited while the second one is sustainable graduation initiative under which households are deliberately prepared for exiting.

“In the sustainable graduation, we beef up exiting households with money plus interventions aimed at ensuring that they do not fall back on social cash transfer in a short space of time.”

Kansinjiro says these money plus interventions include money saving and loans schemes such as Village Savings and Loans (VSLs) groups and various training in business skills that create a surface for the breeding of their money and assets creation.

Through measures such as VSLs and savings and credit cooperativess, beneficiaries in Dedza have carried out visible developments that have set them up for economic stability.

For Chimkwapulo, a maize and beans trader, said that he started with K40 000 by buying four bags of maize and a bag of beans to fill up a stores with over a hundred bags of the two commodities.

Narrating his story, he says having realised his failure to build a solid foundation for his children, he decided to give it a long shot because, to him, this was a last chance to prove that he can develop.

He says: “So, when I started receiving money, I did not take it as an allowance for daily food, but rather a seed to plant. I knew that if I did not use this money wisely I would end up regretting later and there would be no chance to reverse the situation.

“Through the maize business, I bought an ox-cart with oxen [in the form of donkeys] and a push bike. These are important assets here in the village and for my business. To begin with, the bike is the one that I use when I am going to buy farm produce and when I buy more, I use the oxcart to ferry it.”

“But that is not all, because the ox-cart is a seriously lucrative business in its own around here. When harvest time comes, I make more than K20 000 daily through ferrying farm produce for others. This is something that has never been there in my life,” he explains.

Through the two new money sources, Chimkwapulo upgraded his house to a good condition and also bought a motorcycle which he found to be a need.

“I didn’t stop there. Knowing that sometimes business can let you down, so I decided to put in place backups, so I raise pigs, goats and chickens.

“I sell pigs and goats to continue boosting my business and the chickens are meant for household nutrition, which we also learnt through our social cash transfer groups,” he adds.

Even better, Chimkwapulo says: “When I started the farm produce business, I joined Linthipe Cooperative through which recently we won a tender to supply food items to Chimbiya Primary School zone for school feeding programme.

“I am glad to tell you that through that engagement, I have made K260  000 which I just received last week and I am yet to reinvest it in the same food supply business.”

Through his story, one can tell that his once in a lifetime opportunity came to him at a time he needed it most.

He says when he was told that he was graduating from the programme, he did not worry because he is not going to miss the K17 000 he was receiving monthly as long as his businesses continue to thrive.

His story is the same with that of Rabecca Chipwete, a woman who has become a well-known reliable food  supplier in her village, thanks to a business capital from the social cash transfer programme.

Out of a tomato, onions and fresh and dry beans business, she has bought her family the comfort of a new beautiful house.

A keeper of seven male and female children of different ages, Chipwete says before she was enrolled into the programme, her life was a joke considering the lack of dignity that was there for the family living in a small house.

She says: “My biggest dream had always been to be able to move from the smaller house, which was not good enough for my family, to a better one someday.

“But this dream was far-fetched with no base to begin from until the social cash transfer enrolled me. I was geared to start a business that was going to take me to my dream house,” explains Chipwete while seated  on the verandah of a four- bedroom house she has built for her family.

This is aside the fact that her business continues to grow, as she holds on to plans of farming more Irish potatoes this year in order to cash out on them in the next season.

“Right now, I am renting additional pieces of land for farming because come next season, I don’t want to have the same capacity in my business,” she adds.

The social cash transfer coordination at the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Welfare holds that beneficiary graduation from the programme is critical if government’s goals of initiating the programme were to be achieved.

The positivity that Dedza ex-beneficiaries of the programme have portrayed is just a great ingredient for the successful implementation of the graduation programme.

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