Mozambique: Portuguese NGO hands over 2.6 tonnes of food aid in Cabo Delgado

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Mozambique: Portuguese NGO hands over 2.6 tonnes of food aid in Cabo Delgado

8:19 CAT | 21 May 2021

The Portuguese NGO Oikos is delivering between Thursday and Friday 2.6 tonnes of food to families sheltering displaced people in the province of Cabo Delgado, in northern Mozambique, the scene of violent attacks, the organisation announced.

“2.6 tonnes of food are being delivered between today and tomorrow [Friday] to host families of displaced people in Cabo Delgado. The aid is coming via Oikos – cooperation and development, with financial support from Portugal, including from private individuals, public and private entities, as well as the Portuguese government, through the Camões cooperation agency,” the NGO said in a statement.

The food baskets contain essential goods such as flour, rice, beans, sugar and cooking oil.

“At the same time as thousands of people are fleeing violence, over 950,000 people are suffering severe hunger,” according to figures from the World Food Programme, the statement said.

Cabo Delgado province “has the highest rates of chronic malnutrition in Mozambique, with over half of children malnourished, and now thousands of people are even more deeply food insecure,” it added.

Thus, the families hosting the displaced people “are also very poor and are receiving displaced people in their home in solidarity, reaching more than double the household”, highlights the NGO.

According to the Oikos note, in the homes of the host families “there is as much or more lacking than in a Temporary Reception Centre, but the feeling of inclusion and comfort that only a family knows how to give is not lacking”, it stresses.

Besides food aid, Oikos will also distribute “560 school items, which will help families that are hosting orphaned children” so that they can have materials such as pencils, notebooks, books, pens and sharpeners, as about half of the displaced are children.

The NGO also plans to distribute basic necessities such as hygiene, shelter and protection to 15,750 people over the next three months.

Armed groups have terrorised Cabo Delgado since 2017, with some attacks claimed by the ‘jihadist’ group Islamic State, in a wave of violence that has already caused more than 2,500 deaths, according to the ACLED conflict registration project, and 714,000 displaced people, according to the Mozambican government.

The most recent incursion by these groups occurred on 24 March in Palma, almost six kilometres from the gas project under construction, causing dozens of deaths and injuries, with no official assessment announced.

The Mozambican authorities announced they were controlling the town, but the attack led oil company Total to abandon the site of the project which was due to start production in 2024 and on which many of Mozambique’s economic growth expectations for the next decade are anchored.