A $500 million irrigation scheme in southern Malawi is reshaping the landscape—and with it, the risk of diseases spread by mosquitoes and snails. The Shire Valley Transformation Project aims to boost food production, but large-scale irrigation can create breeding grounds for vectors that cause malaria, schistosomiasis, and emerging viruses like dengue. Currently, vector-borne diseases kill 700,000 people globally each year, hitting hardest in communities already facing food shortages and erratic harvests. This research group will embed disease surveillance into the irrigation project from the start. They will track how land-use changes affect vector populations and infection rates, then pilot locally tailored interventions—such as improved water management or targeted insecticide use—and test whether communities accept them. A mathematical model will project how agricultural expansion might alter disease risk across Malawi beyond 2025. If successful, the work could produce a blueprint for balancing food security with disease control in other large-scale agricultural schemes. The findings will feed directly into national policy through Malawi’s Technical Vector Control Advisory Group, potentially reshaping how irrigation projects are planned and managed across the region.
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Infectious diseases are emerging at an unprecedented rate while food production struggles to keep pace with population growth. Large-scale irrigation schemes have the potential to permanently transform the landscape with health, nutritional and socio-economic benefits yet, this also leads to a shift in land-use patterns that can promote endemic and invasive insect vectors and pathogens. Vector-borne diseases (VBDs) account for 700,000 deaths annually, disproportionately affecting those communities which are subject to the greatest shortfalls in dietary intake and uncertain year-on-year harvests. The balance between ensuring food security and preventing emerging infectious disease is a necessity, yet, the impact of irrigation on VBDs at the epidemiological, entomological and economic level is uncertain and depends on the geographical and climatological context. We aim to reduce the transmission and burden from VBDs while maintaining the socio-economic benefits of expanding agricultural development in southern Malawi. The overall goal of this proposal is to develop cross-sectoral and locally tailored solutions that minimise vector-host contact in an agriculturalized transformed environmental landscape. The Group’s programme of work will focus on a ~$500M irrigation scheme, the Shire Valley Transformation Project (SVTP), in southern Malawi. Our research will target those VBDs which are endemic and cause the largest burden of disease (malaria and schistosomiasis) as well as emerging VBDs (e.g. arboviruses) associated with irrigation and water redistribution. Our vision is to develop and promote sustainable practices at the interface of agriculture, public health and socio-economic development that mitigate against the threat of future VBDs. Our aims and objectives are: 1. Strengthen VBD surveillance, management and research capacity between the agricultural and health sector. 2. Detect, define and quantify the risk of acquiring currently endemic and future emerging VBDs during the transformation of the Shire Valley landscape. 3. Pilot locally tailored interventions which tackle either single or multiple vectors, determine their acceptability to the community and establish their value for money. 4. Integrate VBD control into agricultural and irrigation policy, using the evidence generated through this GHRG to provide recommendations for mitigating VBDs in future planned extensions of the SVTP and other national agricultural development schemes. To ensure the success of this GHRG we will deliver four integrated work packages via an equitable partnership of Malawian and UK scientists. We will use the recently formed Technical Vector Control Advisory Group (TVCAG) in Malawi to bring together stakeholders in agriculture and public health to determine research priorities, advocate for vector control and disseminate findings (WP1). A network for ‘Vector Research in Irrigated Agriculture’ will strengthen individual and institutional capacity. Empirical evidence for VBD transmission will be assessed via vector and epidemiological surveillance supported by ethnographic research (WP2) and this will guide three pilot interventions to minimise vector-host contact and evaluate the community acceptability (WP3). Finally using a combination of mathematical modelling and policy engagement (led by AFIDEP) we will determine the future impact of agricultural expansion on VBDs in the Shire Valley and throughout Malawi beyond 2025.
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