Mozambique: Some 3.3M face food insecurity due to insurgency, floods, drought

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Mozambique: Some 3.3M face food insecurity due to insurgency, floods, drought

10:38 CAT | 20 Mar 2024

FILE - For illustration purposes only. [File photo: Lusa]

Around 3.3 million people face food insecurity in Mozambique, due to drought and floods, executive secretary of the Technical Secretariat for Food and Nutritional Security (SETSAN), Leonor Mondlane, said today.

“Right now, we have a post-shock study for 2023, which estimated around 2.3 million people who are food insecure, with 3.3 million projected by March,” Mondlane said.

Leonor Mondlane was speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the launch of an online food systems platform that aggregates data from various institutions on food production, transport and consumption.

She said that a new assessment would be carried out in April to determine the food and nutritional security situation in the country, taking into account that it is “a dynamic process”.

“We will update these indicators in April, but the projection until March is 3.3 million people in a situation of food and nutritional insecurity resulting from floods, droughts, among other causes,” the SETSAN executive secretary stressed.

Mondlane stated that the people experiencing food insecurity depends on assistance from the government and national and international partners. People in need include victims of armed attacks in Cabo Delgado and Nampula provinces, both in northern Mozambique, she added.

Mondlane pointed out that more than 300 schools across the country are covered by a school lunch distribution program for students affected by hunger in educational establishments.

Mondlane said that the food systems platform launched in Maputo today would become an important instrument for harmonising information on food insecurity and malnutrition in the country, since the available data is currently “dispersed” and “fragmented”.

“The objective is to collate information so that the didactic role of informing and harmonising the understanding of and preventing and combating food insecurity and chronic malnutrition in the country can be fulfilled,” she explained.

The tool, she continued, would help state institutions and other users formulate policies and strategies.

Source: Lusa