By Watipaso Mzungu
LILONGWE-(MaraviPost)-Malawi’s 2025/2026 tobacco registration season has descended into chaos, with thousands of smallholder growers forced to spend days and nights at designated registration centres across the country due to persistent technical glitches and a sloppy rollout of the new Know Your Grower (KYG) system.
From Nambuma Extension Planning Area (EPA) in Lilongwe, to Kandewu in Ntcheu and Bolero in Rumphi, the story is the same: long queues, failed biometric capture, network failures and exhausted farmers sleeping on verandas and under trees waiting for a system that never comes online.
The registration, which is mandatory and is being jointly conducted by the Tobacco Commission (TC), TAMA Farmers Trust and other stakeholders, was meant to streamline the grower database, eliminate ghost farmers and improve traceability. Instead, it has become a nightmare for the very farmers it was meant to serve.
At Bolero, grower Tiwonge Nyirenda said she arrived at the centre on Monday morning and by Saturday evening she was still not yet registered.
“I came from deep in the village with money for transport. The officials told us the system is down. The network is failing and the gadgets are not capturing fingerprints. We have been told to wait. For three nights we have been sleeping here on sacks outside the EPA office. We have no food, we have no blankets. This is not how we should be treated,” said Nyirenda, who grows less than a hectare of tobacco.
She added that commuting growers start arriving as early as 4am only to be told the system is “offline”.
“Farmers from hard-to-reach areas like Hewe have had to spend over four days at the centre, spending money meant for fertilizer on food and lodging. We are poor farmers. We budgeted K20,000 for transport, but now we have spent double because we are sleeping at the trading centre. The officers only register 15 people per day when we are hundreds,” said another grower from Bolero who declined to be named.
The situation is replicated in Ntcheu and Lilongwe, where growers reported that they exhausted the little money that had budgeted for transport and meals.
At Nambuma EPA, grower Ashan Mangani could not hide his frustration.
“We are being punished. And what is more painful is that this year’s tobacco market has been the worst. And then we have this!” lamented Mangani.
Growers and field officers interviewed in all three districts pointed to the same problems of system downtime where the registration gadgets and KYG platform frequently fail to sync with the central server, biometric failures where fingerprint scanners are reportedly failing to capture prints of elderly farmers, poor preparation where registration centres are understaffed and ill-equipped with some lacking power backup and internet connectivity, and no communication with no clear information on when the system will be stable, leaving farmers stranded.
A field officer in Ntcheu who spoke on condition of anonymity said the system was rolled out before thorough testing.
“We are embarrassed because farmers think we are the ones delaying them, but it is the system. Sometimes it logs in for 30 minutes and goes off for the whole day,” he said.
TC spokesperson Telephorus Chigwenembe said he needed more time to “establish what is happening”. But sources within the Commission admitted that there have been “intermittent connectivity challenges” especially in rural EPAs.
For many growers, the delay is more than an inconvenience — it threatens their entire season. Without registration, a farmer cannot be allocated quota, cannot access inputs on loan, and cannot sell at the auction floors next year.
“Last year we were told to register early. Now we have come early and we are being punished. If I am not registered, what will I do with my nursery? The rains are coming,” lamented a farmer at Kandewu.
Farmer representative bodies, including TAMA Farmers Trust, have expressed concern that the sloppy registration could lead to low grower numbers being recorded, which will affect production estimates and market planning.
“If this continues, many genuine smallholder growers will be left out. The Commission must urgently fix the system, decentralize further, and provide mobile registration teams instead of forcing farmers to sleep at EPAs for a week,” said another farmer from Nambuma.
As of Saturday evening, growers at Bolero were still huddled around a small fire, waiting for officials to tell them whether the system would be back online on Monday.
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