Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi has urged those who have received funding under the Sustenta programme to serve as an example in food production, and exploit to the maximum the resources allocated by the government and its partners for agricultural activity.
He reaffirmed on Thursday that his government’s flagship agricultural development programme. Sustenta will refine the agriculture that farmers need to increase their production and productivity and thus fight against hunger.
He was speaking in Vanduzi district, in the central province of Manica, where he delivered 25 tractors to farmers and 89 motor-cycles to agricultural extensionists.
In addition to the tractors and motor-cycles, there was also the delivery of cheques to emerging small producers for sums ranging between 4.8 and six million meticais (between 63,900 and 83,300 US dollars).
“Manica is the country’s granary”, he said, “and so it should contribute to the fight against hunger, and in reducing food imports”. He wanted to see Sustenta beneficiaries “working the land for their sustenance and to guarantee food for other peoples”.
Nyusi urged farmers to abandon empirical production, and opt for scientific production instead. “We should bank on agriculture of research, where knowledge allows us to increase production”, he said. “This programme will allow peasant farmers to be directly linked to extensionists in the transmission of new production techniques”.
He insisted that Mozambicans must stop depending on food imports, and make adequate use of the land to guarantee the food and nutritional security of the population. The President called for intensive agriculture “to make the land profitable because the final goal is zero hunger in the near future. This will be demanded of the beneficiaries of this programme”.
He recalled that, when Sustenta was launched in Tete province, many people thought it was just a dream, but now they were seeing it come to fruition.
“We want to empower agriculture through building up the capacity of producers and extensionists in new production techniques”, said Nyusi.
“In a scientific, organised and programmed way, the extensionists will help the producers”, he added. “We have also delivered cheques. These are loans that must be paid back in order to help other producers. That’s what we say it is important to make the best use of this support in order to increase income”.
“We don’t want you to do the same as happened in the past when people benefitted from money and did not repay it”, Nyusi warned.
Nyusi was thinking about the District Development Fund (FDD) set up in 2006 by his predecessor, Armando Guebuza. Under the FDD, seven million meticais (about 233,000 US dollars, at the exchange rate of the time) was given every year to every district to be distributed among producers who presented viable projects that would boost food production and create jobs.
The FDD was supposed to be a rotating credit scheme. The money was to be repaid so that it could be lent out again. Year after year, the FDD lent out the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars, but the vast majority of this money was never repaid. Few were the districts where repayment rates went above ten per cent.
Nobody was ever arrested for this blatant abuse of state funds, and there has never been a final reckoning of how much the FDD cost the country, and what benefits, if any, it brought.
Nyusi seems determined to ensure that nothing of the sort happens with the Sustenta funds.
