Malawi’s Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) has a mandate to promote and accelerate broadbased and sustainable agricultural development, so as to stimulate economic growth and contribute to poverty reduction. The MoA is responsible for policy formulation and regulation, the coordination of training and collaboration with other stakeholders in the agriculture sector, and supervision of parastatal organisations, for which it also guarantees loans. Decentralisation policy reforms, ongoing since 2000, have led to important institutional changes in the MoA’s structures and decisionmaking processes at local level. In particular, the changes have placed a new emphasis on the MoA’s role in coordinating, facilitating and regulating the activities of different players, as opposed to direct delivery of services. This briefing looks at the successes and limits of the process so far and identifies some challenges for the future.