Mozambique’s government has approved sweeping new regulations for its cashew sector, a decisive move to restore competitiveness in a global market the country once dominated. The Council of Ministers passed the measure through a decree regulating the 2023 Cashew Law, replacing 2018 era legislation and setting specific rules across the value chain, from production and drying to packaging, marketing, transport, processing, export and import.
Officials describe the reform as a bid to harmonise and modernise a legal framework that has struggled to keep pace with the sector’s ambitions. The new regulation is, in the government’s words, “a regulatory instrument aligned with the development, growth, transformation and competitiveness” of the cashew value chain. A government official explained, “The proposed regulation is relevant and crucial for strengthening the competitiveness of the cashew value chain in all its scope and that of the country in the global cashew market. There is expectation for the reform to contribute to strengthening the security that attracts investment to the cashew value chain.”
The overhaul follows a volatile run for export earnings. Cashew nut exports rose from US$57.3 million in 2023 to US$98.2 million in 2024, then slipped to US$66 million in 2025, according to Bank of Mozambique data compiled by Lusa. The first quarter of 2026 has already generated US$68.4 million in exports, plus a further US$2.9 million from cashew kernel sales, an early signal of recovery. The reform occurred less than a year after the launch of the government’s US$374 million Cashew Value Chain Development Programme, targeting a rise in annual production from 158,000 tonnes to 689,000 tonnes by 2034. The programme centres on research, extension services, marketing and processing and aims to expand producer support from 230,000 to more than 600,000 farmers while lifting processing capacity from 40,000 to over 482,000 tonnes.
The ambition has historical grounding. Cashew nut marketing during the 2024/2025 campaign reached around 195,400 tonnes, nearing levels last seen in the colonial era, when Mozambique ranked among the world’s largest producers. National output exceeded 200,000 tonnes annually around fifty years ago and in 1973 Mozambique ranked second globally in processed cashew production, behind only India. Output collapsed to 15,000 to 20,000 tonnes annually after independence in 1975, the very decline this strategy is designed to reverse.
