Mozambique: Campaign against early marriage starts with focus on rural areas

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Mozambique: Campaign against early marriage starts with focus on rural areas

3:15 CAT | 02 Nov 2017

DW: Graça Samo

Coordinator of the International Secretariat of the World March of Women Graça Samo says that fewer early marriages will be good for agriculture, and that the large numbers of premature marriages is based on lack of information.

The DW Africa talked to Graçe Samo on the margins of the annual meeting of the Coordinating Committee Mozambique-Germany, KKM, on Saturday 21 November in Bielefeld.

A 2016 report from the Southern Africa Network Against Child Trafficking (SANTAC) indicates that Mozambique is among the countries with the highest rates of early marriage in the world, occupying 11th position, and second in Southern Africa.

DW Africa (DW): Premature marriage is common in many parts of Mozambique. Is it a problem merely of informing women and their families, or is it a cultural problem that goes beyond access to information?

Graça Samo (GS): The issue of premature marriage or forced marriage, as we call it, is a combination of factors. Because we have a situation where girls get pregnant innocently, sometimes as a result of a rape, and sometimes enter a relationship in the expectation of a better life. But often arrangements are made by their own families. That then is not merely lack of information, but a continuation of a preexisting modus vivendi. Marriage at a very young age is already part of our history, but today we have been through so many social crises that people are seeking appropriate solutions. For families with many children that they are unable to sustain, the answer is to find someone who can.

DW: What are the alternatives?

GS: Some alternatives have to do with family planning.

DW: So, having fewer children?

GS: Exactly. Factors so that people can have the children they want, but the community, social and economic conditions are guaranteed. And what are these? They can continue to have land as a means of production, seed to produce and access to space to put the products they produce. We continue to say that agriculture is the solution to the problems of our country.

DW: So Africa should combat early marriages by focusing attention on the countryside supplying, for example, the markets of the cities closest to them?

GS: The closest cities and rural areas. There is a lot of effort being put into marketing, but the resulting income is not sufficient to maintain living conditions. So, we need to work on the micro scale before move to the macro, creating awareness so that we produce enough to feed ourselves. When we have food we have more strength to work and produce more. And producing more means that we have a surplus to sell on the local market. But that is an exchange ratio. We have to sell for money to buy what we can’t produce such as sugar or soap. And can process what we produce for our own consumption and local marketing. So, it is very important to think about the development of the local economy before we get into big business.

Source: Deutsche Welle