Mozambique

Key actors

Mozambique has had longstanding efforts to co-ordinate government and donor efforts on food security, but not always with great success. The current umbrella is SETSAN, the Technical Secretariat for Food Security andNutrition, that brings together the ministries of agriculture, health, industry and commerce, and the national institute for disaster management together with key donors such as WFP and some NGOs. SETSAN is led from the ministry of agriculture.

Since May 2003 SETSAN has its own offices where staff from different entities, including agriculture and FEWSNET, will have space so that physically getting people together will be simple.

Food security issues and debates

Mozambique is the least affected country in the emergency: the 2001/02 climatic variability was localised in the south, the north had a good harvest, and the economic context is one of a growing economy - albeit from a low base. Food insecurity is heavily concentrated in parts of the central and southern regions, so that there are districts with severe problems. In some cases, their plight is made all the worse since they were hit by flooding in 2000 and had barely recovered from that disaster when the 2001 dry spell struck.

Otherwise, the issues that arise in Mozambique include the following:

• General agricultural recovery and reconstruction. Mozambique is still recovering from the internal conflict that was only settled in the early 1990s. At the same time it has liberalised its economies from the state-controlled model that prevailed throughout the 1980s. The issues are simple to express, but dauntingly large: how can a country with enormous areas of good agricultural land, and a relatively small population of 16M, put this land to good use? The context is one of very little physical infrastructure and a population with little formal schooling and poor health indices. Agricultural strategy debates show divisions between those who favour the broad development of smallholder farming as poverty reduction strategy, versus those who argue that only feasible way to get agriculture moving in the short term is to promote large-scale commercial farming in favoured locations;
  
• Trade in agricultural commodities. The north of the country generally produces surpluses of food crops and did so in 2001/02. Malawi borders on this region and often has food deficits, including in 2001/02. Not surprisingly, much of the surplus in northern Mozambique found its way into Malawi. Meanwhile the food deficit areas of southern Mozambique were supplied with imported cereals. Does it matter that the north may form part of a food economy with Malawi and not with southern Mozambique? What can be done to integrate the Mozambican domestic market more effectively?
  

In additional, the possibility of extending stakeholder consultation processes to farmers was raised. This might be done in a similar way to that suggested in Malawi.

Food security stakeholders

• Government departments: Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development; Ministry of Planning and Finance; Ministry of Industry and Commerce
  
• Monitoring networks: especially for crop forecasting; Famine Early Warning System Network; Vulnerability Assessment Committee
  
• Private sector: e.g. Grain millers
  
• International NGOs: e.g. SC; MSF; Care; Action Aid; World Vision; Oxfam GB; Hellen Keller International
  
• Civil society and local NGOs: e.g. ORAM Associacao Rural de Ajuda Mutua
  
• Research organisations: e.g. Eduardo Mondlane University
  
• Donors: e.g. DFID; EU; WB; USAID
  
• UN/Humanitarian agencies: e.g. WFP; UNICEF; FAO; UNAIDS; UNDP
  

The Forum for Food Security in Southern Africa is contributing to national high level food security policy options seminars taking place in each focus country (ie Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe) in 2004. See the relevant country page for details.

Click on the links for the Mozambique Country Food Security Options Paper and other documents under Mozambique section in information centre.

Contributions to and comments on the work of the Forum for Food Security relating to Mozambique are warmly welcomed. Please contact Steve Wiggins for country specific comments on Mozambique.