Groundnut farmer in Malawi
Khulungira is a village of about 150 families in central Malawi, near the border with Mozambique, 27 km from the nearest paved road and 50 km from the nearest town.
There is no electricity and no running water. No one here owns a car or a motorcycle. Few parents can afford to send their children to secondary school. The people of Khulungira grow their own food, cut their own firewood and build their own houses. Farmer Rufina Gibson, an 80-year-old widow, depends on groundnuts for protein and income. She recently switched from a traditional variety to CG7, a high-yielding, disease resistant variety co-developed by ICRISAT and Malawi's national research program. Her yield has tripled. What has changed? 'I'm able to buy clothes, plates, fish, soap, and salt. Before this, I had nothing.' Here she harvests potatoes (photo credit: ILRI/Mann).