The Government of Flanders gladly congratulates the Agricultural Commodity Exchange for Africa (ACE) for obtaining Malawi’s first ever issued Commodity Exchange License by the Registrar of Financial Institutions. Obtaining the license means that ACE’s operations are now recognised as formal structured trade and monitored by the Reserve Bank of Malawi.

The Government of Flanders has supported the operations of ACE through the project Strengthening Farmer Organizations and Rural Structured Trade Mechanisms in Malawi from July 2014 to end 2018 in order to increase market access for smallholder farmers. The first regularisation in the use of warehouse receipts came late 2017 after parliament approved the Warehouse Receipt Act and secondly after the Government of Malawi issued the Commodity Exchange Directive in April 2019.

The Government of Flanders wishes ACE success in its efforts to structure the largely informal trade of agricultural commodities in Malawi further and trusts that this important step will help smallholder farmers obtaining better prices through formal markets.