Sara Maunda lives on a two-acre farm about 50 km outside Lilongwe. She would normally sell to traders who came to her farm, and she assumed they were paying her market prices.
In 2011 she registered with ACE and started receiving price information on her phone. She harvested 150kg of groundnuts that year, and when the trader came to her farm she was shocked to find out that he was only offering her a fourth of the price she had received on her phone.
She rented a pick-up with her neighbours. "…and there we were: off to Lilongwe with our bags of groundnuts," as she put it.
Sara managed to get USD 130 after cost, compared to the USD 27 she would have received from the vendor.
Sara Maunda
Smallholder farmer
Lilongwe District
SourcePublished by USAID; collected in the ACE Retrospective 2005-2020
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