Mozambique: New Secretary of SETSAN takes office – Watch

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Mozambique: New Secretary of SETSAN takes office – Watch

6:33 CAT | 30 Mar 2022

Photo: TVM

The Mozambican government wants to reduce the levels of chronic malnutrition among children through increased agricultural production and the availability of good quality foodstuffs, said Prime Minister Adriano Maleiane on Tuesday.

He was speaking at the ceremony in Maputo where he swore into office Leonor Mondlane as the new Executive Secretary of the Food and Nutritional Security Technical Secretariat (SETSAN).

Chronic malnutrition remains a serious public health problem in Mozambique. The latest data suggest that 38 per cent of all children under the age of five are chronically malnourished (alarming though this figure is, it is an improvement on the 43 per cent reported a couple of years ago).

Maleiane called on Mondlane “to strengthen and institutionalise the food and nutritional security coordination structures at provincial and district level throughout the country, and strengthen the integrated information about food security so as to capture disaggregated data at all levels”.

He urged SETSAN to promote actions of advocacy for social change and a change in diet, and “to build the capacity of leaders of public institutions and civil society, and media professionals, to deal with matters of food security and nutrition”.

For her part, Mondlane, who works in the Ministry of Agriculture, said she is ready for her new tasks. She stressed the need to coordinate the education, health, agriculture and fisheries sectors, among others, “in order to find the best response to the food security situation”.

She said there had been improvements in producing fortified and good quality foods, but there remained a great deal to be done.

“Rather than just producing food, we must bank on dietary education, because we have areas which produce food in abundance, but continue to face nutritional challenges”, she said.

Mondlane replaces Celmira da Silva, who left SETSAN in February, to take up the post of general director of the National Administration of Conservation Areas (ANAC).

Watch the TVM report.