Mozambique: Authorities appeal to displaced in Cabo Delgado to grow food, stop depending on handouts

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Mozambique: Authorities appeal to displaced in Cabo Delgado to grow food, stop depending on handouts

8:47 CAT | 10 Dec 2021

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

The president of the National Institute for Disaster Management (INGD) in Mozambique, Luisa Meque, has appealed to displaced people (IDPs) in Cabo Delgado to intensify agricultural production in order to stop depending on donations.

“Each house has space for a vegetable patch, which can improve diets a little bit,” she said, alluding to plots of land allocated for housing made of traditional materials.

“We don’t know how long [our partners] will give food. So, we have to create a sustainable base to minimise the food deficit we have,” she said during a visit to a centre for displaced people in Metuge, near the provincial capital, Pemba.

The Nangua 2 centre houses around 4,000 displaced persons, who arrived mainly in August.

Despite the continuous appeal to partners, “the time will come when we won’t be able” to source donations, she warned.

As many of the displaced are from [agricultural] “production areas”, so “they will be able to do something” with the plots of land they receive, she said. Despite the difficulties in Cabo Delgado, they should not stop practising subsistence farming, as most Mozambican families do.

Seeds and other agricultural consumables have formed part of some donations in the province, but the figures reflect urgent unmet needs. Authorities estimate that over 1.8 million people in Mozambique live in a situation of acute food insecurity, about a million of them in Cabo Delgado.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has announced humanitarian food support for the majority, but the quantities delivered correspond to only 39% of individual daily energy needs.

During the visit to Metuge, Luisa Meque also warned of the coming rainy season, which runs from October to April, and the fact that there are IDP centres (such as Nangua 2) in places prone to flooding.

“If it rains a little more, this area will be flooded. Our appeal is that they leave for safer places.”

Cabo Delgado province is rich in natural gas, but has been terrorized for four years by armed rebels, with some attacks claimed by the Islamic State extremist group.

The conflict has already cost more than 3,100 lives, according to the ACLED conflict registration project, and displaced more than 817,000 civilians, according to the Mozambican authorities.

Since July, an offensive by government troops, with the support of Rwanda, later joined by the Southern African Development Community (SADC), has recovered several areas, including the town of Mocímboa da Praia, occupied by the insurgents since August, 2020.

Source: Lusa