You’re on top of it: Land Rights in Mozambique

When you read about Mozambique’s agricultural potential it’s hard not to get a sense that the projections are too optimistic. You read about the Beira and the Nancala corridors and their vast swats unused land and wonder why haven’t those corridors become the bread basket of the region already? Why is it that with the growing urban demand, the increasing international commodity prices and the improvements in infrastructure, Mozambique’s agriculture remains stuck on first gear?

It may be the soils – something must be wrong with the soils – you ponder. But then you cross the border into South Africa and the green revolution hits you in the face. (see Google maps for a satellite image). Literally less than a mile away from the border post, the grounds are green with sugar cane crops irrigated with center-pivot systems (those long skeletons that form perfect circles and that are easily confused with the work of a UFO when seen from above). You continue driving and then you see plantains stretching for miles in neatly organized rows. As if this wasn’t enough, suddenly the landscape gets peppered by orange dots on both sides of the highway: citrus season is at its peak and you can buy a whole sack for less than three dollars.

Soils, unlike Colombians, don’t need a visa to cross the border so the bottleneck keeping agriculture below its potential has to be something else. You think about water but then you recall the huge floods this country has faced in the past, so the rivers and their abundant water are definitely there. What about the war, or colonialism, or just culture – aren’t people ‘happy’ just being subsistence farmers? The answer is definitely no, otherwise you wouldn’t hear parent talk about how they want their kids doing something else. And sure, the war and colonialism did affect agriculture quite a bit.

However, you may be standing on top of a more satisfactory answer: the land and specifically its property laws. Well, it turns out that in Mozambique the land belongs to the Mozambicans (aka the government). Instead of buying land, you essentially get a permit to farm it for a fixed amount of years. If land is let fallow, the government has all the right to take it away from you. And even if you are growing bountiful crops, you don’t have legal ownership of the land.

So is that why land in Mozambique remains so underdeveloped? I think it’s definitely a big contributing factor. And it seems that USAID also agrees. Their new version of the Feed the Future Initiative – the so called “Agriculture and Food Security Alliance” is all about partnering with the private sector to give the extra incentive needed to invest here. Mozambique makes part of the second group of countries that will be joining the program. On top of that, the government is finalizing the PNISA, the operationalization document of the agricultural strategy and the action plan for the CADAAP.

Given this willingness to address the bottlenecks related to the disincentives the private sector faces when investing in Mozambique, it seems that the country is heading in the right direction. Although it’s not clear is the actual property law will change, there is definitely a lot of pressure to make it more investor friendly with amendments, tax breaks, and import waivers.

This, of course, has its critics. Chief among them is the Joseph Hanlon, an expert on Mozambique who argued in a recent Guardian article that the private sector approach is incompatible with one that promotes small holder farmers. Although he didn’t call it neocolonialism, he portrayed it as an unwelcome entrenchment of global agro-corporations, scrambling for the last swaps of arable land.

What the author forgets to mention is that an approach in which you incentivized agricultural investments, while supporting small holder farmers is exactly what Brazil did – one of the top five world agricultural producers nowadays and a success story in reducing rural poverty. While Mozambique is far from becoming a global agriculture player, it seems that the country is finally now heading in the right direction.

How to Make your Peanuts Unforgettable

Togolese Peanuts

Back in 2007 I had the opportunity to visit Togo - one of those countries in West Africa you don't hear much about. And there is a reason for that: Compared to its neighbors, Togo does not have much to offer.

There is, however, one thing that has stayed with me since that morning when I walked along the streets of Lome: the amazing taste of SAND-ROASTED PEANUTS. These goodies are salty, crunchy and delicious. By roasting them with heated sand, the peanuts are evenly toasted to perfection. Unlikely anything I've ever tried, the flavor of these nuts lingered on my tastebuds for years. In despair, I was always looking for people how could bring me back some from Togo but only once I got that lucky.

And then I came to Mozambique, where women abound selling small bags of the same sand-roasted peanuts!! (The only difference is that here they are sold with the skin on - not big deal). So I decided to learn how to make them and don't rely on remote African countries to satisfy my crave for crispy, crackling peanuts. More importantly, I'm sharing with you my dear readers what up to now has been a culinary secret passed on from generation to generation.

So lo and behold, here are the instructions of to make your peanuts memorable:

Step 1: Get the ingredients 
Note: understand what's going on instead of worrying about the exact measurements

Raw Peanuts

• 2lb of Raw Peanuts. Make sure you buy the jumbo size. 
• 8lb of Sand. Get it from a nearby beach as it will have traces of salt that will enhance the flavor (I'm not kidding). Also, make sure that the sand is not fine but rather coarse. If it's the powdery type, it will get inside the peanuts.
• 6 cups of water: To boil the peanuts. 
• 3tbs of Salt: For the water. After adding the salt, make sure the water taste like the pacific: very salty! 

Peanuts being Boiled 

Step 2: Boil Peanuts

Pour the 6 cups of water into a large pot. Add salt, taste it, and make sure is quite salty. The peanuts will absorb a lot of this salt so be generous. Depending on the size of the pot, you may have to split the peanuts in two or three batches. The idea is that there is about two floating layers of peanuts, above 3-4 inches of water. Add the peanuts and bring water to boil. It should take about 15-20 minutes. Once the water is boiling, keep the peanuts for another 10 minutes in the boiling water. To make sure they're ready, take one peanut and look for the following: a wrinkling skin and a yellowish color in the inside. 

Step 3: Put peanuts on a tray and dry 

Guarding Cat

After boiling the peanuts, drain them and put them in a tray so they can dry. It's very important that a cat supervises the drying process, ensuring that no birds get a hold of your soon-to-be-unforgettable peanuts. 

Although I prefer sun-drying, you could also use paper towels and a microwave, but that's lame. 

Step 4: Heat up the SAND!! 

Sand for the Indian Ocean

Start by putting some charcoal on a grill. Get it going until is flaming hot. Let me pause for a second: Laurinda, the woman that taught me how to do this, claims that a stove won't get the sand hot enough...I have my doubts, but if you don't have a grill go ahead and use a stove.
So once the grill is pretty hot, add the a cast-iron pot with the sand. Wait about 20min for the sand to get really hot. You'll see fumes coming out of it and if you touch it, you'll burn your fingers (I think it's important to have scars from legendary recipes, so go ahead and dip your fingers in the sand) . Then add enough peanuts to cover the surface of the pot.
The following step is the trickiest so pay close attention:

Step 5: Shake those Peanuts! (time to put on some good Mozambican music)
Once in the sand, the peanuts will take about 15-20 minutes to roast to perfection. It's really important that every 2-3 minutes you shake, churn, and spin the peanuts. I've added a video to show you how to do this (see below), but essentially, you need to make sure that none of the peanuts stay at the bottom of the pot, otherwise they'll burn quickly and ruin the party. Thanks to Laurinda for teaching me all this!!

The Color of Perfection

Get the Sand Out

Look for the brownish color - it indicates crunchiness and new friends. Once you got the level of crunchiness you like, get the peanuts out of the sand (or they'll keep cooking), spread them on a tray, and let them cool down.
Note that if you let them roast too much, the skin will like break and sand will get inside. It's not a big deal because you almost always take the skin off to eat them, but it's a bit annoying when traces of sand end up in your mouth.

Step 6: Enjoy and Show Off: 

La Negra y los Morenos

Anyway, you're pretty much done. Keep them in a dry, sealed container. Otherwise they lose their crunchiness. You can sell them for $7 a pound or give them as presents to your best friends. You can also impress your guests at a dinner party or simply eat them by yourself watching a good movie and enjoying a cold Laurentina Preta.

Anything can happen with these peanuts.

Bon appetit!

Communicating Nutrition: From London to Maputo

One of the things that went unnoticed about the London Olympics was a great event organized by DFID and the British government, showcasing the importance of tacking global chronic malnutrition. This was part of a larger effort coordinated by the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement.

Mozambique's agriculture minister attended the event and we helped draft his remarks arguing for a better integration of agriculture and nutrition. Unfortunately, aside from some coverage by The Guardian, and other media outlets, little was mentioned about the event on the press.

Although it's getting better, this is a difficult problem those working on global nutrition continue to face: creating a sense of urgency about stunting and what to do about it. As opposed to the powerful images of wasting or starvation, stunted children appear 'normal' and their short height for their age is often attributed to cultural factors.  I would often hear that misconception while working in Nicaragua where indigenous children are thought to be shorter 'by nature.' However, I was surprise to hear the same argument it once again here in Mozambique. (The picture on the right compares Guatemalan children with the height of their counterpart raised in the US)

Currently, we're working on developing a communication strategy that addresses the issue of poor nutrition communication. The government strategy to tackle stunting -the PAMRDC- was approved two years ago and there is a sense that we're losing momentum. With the exception of one, none of the provinces have started implementing the plan. That's why it's really important to reengage politicians and policy makers about the importance of addressing chronic malnutrition with a well-defined advocacy and communication strategy.

The arsenal to do this already exists. There are robust studies that link stunting to adult labor productivity and income generation - an argument that a finance minister will likely entertain. There is also plenty of evidence about how chronic malnutrition exacerbates child illnesses and increases mortality rates. Officials at the ministry of health will definitely pay attention to that. Similarly, underfunded institution working on water and sanitation and school feeding programs will also love to hear about how their work impacts nutrition.

And then there is also the broader message about keeping a nation well feed, ensuring that everyone has access to the most basic need - adequate food. In a country that experienced food riots when the price of bread went up just two years ago, this particular message resonates well with voters and politicians. With rural poverty on the rise and early signs of a resource curse, Mozambicans are increasingly worried about the price of food and politicians are taking note.

Despite all these rock solid arguments and incentives, getting all the organizations and institutions together and have them agreed on the key messages we want to send across remains a monumental challenge. Food security in this country continues to be about increasing yields and making food more available. But just the fact Nampula - the country's bread basket - has the second highest rate of stunting should put serious question marks on this approach.

The other challenge is to grab politician's short attention span. They are interested in the silver bullets and the buzz of the day. They love to sign lofty plans and strategies but when it comes to allocating the funds to implement, they can't find the pen to sign the check. As I said on my previous post, Mozambique is filled with strategies that do not materialized and are rather the reflection of demanding donors.

So yes, by championing their own approach and coordinating little with others of their kind, donors don't make things easier either. A recent article by Joseph Hanlon explores these issues of conflicting approaches. And while I don't agree with the article's main point - that the country has to focus on small holders at the expense of neglecting international agricultural investment - his point about fleeting donor interest is well taken.

We'll continue working on this communication and advocacy strategy. In the meantime, check out the video below showing Prime Minister Cameron describing the need for focusing on global nutrition - an excellent example of an engaged leader that understand well global nutrition.

Mozambique Thought Series: Sopa do Planos – (Strategies soup)

This is the first one of a series of reflections about my internship in Mozambique. I apologies to readers as the blog has been quite neglected in the past couple months. However, time permitting, I intend to get back to my normal posting habits. Tell me what you think!

Try the following: google ‘Mozambique government strategy’, grab a shield, and hit enter. You will be bombarded with hundreds of official government documents, detailing strategies to… you name it – from reducing poverty and malnutrition to promoting culture and sovereignty. For newcomers to the country – such as me – these documents are a solid proof that the government is serious about the issues of your choice. My issue is food security and nutrition and if you read the PAMRDC (the government’s strategy to combat malnutrition or ‘the bible’ as I call it), the essence of integrated development emerges clearly. You look in detailed and find out that all the Lancet interventions of their maternal and child healthseries are included and you cannot content your happiness. In other countries where REACH operates, such level of government commitment is years in the future. But then you take a copy of your bible to a meeting with a provincial ministry director and he says “PAMR….what”?

Yes, Mozambique has a soup of strategies that seek to satisfy different audiences -especially donors- but when it comes to implementation these lofty strategies often fail to reach the ground. So here is my own exercise to navigate this endless list of documents:  


The country’s development strategy is set in the PQG – a five year plan – and the PARPA. The former is presented to voters and the later to international donors. In addition to those, pretty much every ministry has its plan, and for cross-sectorial interventions such as nutrition, gender, and others, you also have development plans.

But those are just the key ingredients for the soup’s stock. What really makes the soup tasty (or terrible for that matter) are the local strategies. For that, every provincial and district office has a multi-year strategy and the yearly PES (economic and social plans). Moreover, large NGO have projects that completely overshadow the organizational capacity of these local governments and their respective plans. Not only there is little coordination between the NGO’s project and the PES, but also such projects provide little capacity to local governments, and in occasions living things worse off when the project ends.

Another very significant challenge is that cross-sectorial issues at national and local level have little legal and budgetary power. Since these strategies rely on a coordinated approach, they quickly become bureaucratic orphans as none of the ministries likes to take a leadership role in their implementation. And while the country has SETSAN - an agency mandated with the coordination of food security and nutrition interventions among ministries – petty turf wars have left the agency toothless and inefficient – a comment I will often hear outside the formal meeting settings.

So what now? Well, stay tuned for the next post. Something tells me that after all this soup may serve well to Mozambique’s outstanding cuisine.  

Mozambique's Soybean Potential

As some of you know, I'll be traveling to Mozambique over the summer to work on a new UN initiative named REACH - Renew Efforts Against Child Hunger. The overall goal of REACH is to facilitate better governance and management of nutrition programs and ensure that UN agencies (FAO, WFP, UNICEF, and WHO) are coordinating their nutrition interventions.

With more than 40% of children under five stunted, Mozambique's government has prioritized the fight against chronic malnutrition. However, the integrated nature of nutrition programming makes it difficult to  operationalize, specially in Mozambique where there are so many development agencies and initiatives working at the same time.

Agricultural projects that can have a positive impact in reducing stunting are gaining traction in the development discourse.  Mozambique has an incredible potential to increase its food production and use agricultural development as an powerful engine for economic growth. The country has plenty of unused arable land, growing urban markets inside and abroad, cheap labor, and a great geographic location, with deep-water ports and infrastructure projects needing relatively little investments.

Can soybean lead the way in agricultural development? As the video below shows, the Northern part of the country has soils similar to those in the Cerrado - the Brazilian soy basket. According to the video, the Mozambique government recently signed an agreement with Brazilian soy farmers, allowing them to farm these lands in exchange for increased labor demand and technological advice on soy farming.

The initiative is also been supported by EMBRAPA, Brazil's agricultural research agency along with JICA and USAID. They are all working with government officials to adapt seed varieties to the Northern region and identify the steps need to develop soy's the value chain.

Similar, a World Bank study recently noted the following:

Soybean is a fairly new crop in Mozambique, but agricultural and market scenarios suggest a high potential in the northern Zambezia/southern Niassa area of northern Mozambique, and in Manica and Tete provinces in central Mozambique. In both production areas, improved soybean production can strongly benefit from a local good demand of soybean sub-products and investments in new industrial units, and from  already existing roads and railways linking to the important consumer markets of Beira  in the center and Nampula and Nacala in the north

More recently, Rei do Agro, a local agricultural firm, announced the plantation of 500 hectares of soybeans in the Zambézia province. This follows similar private sector initiatives that are taking advantage of the increasing world demand for soybeans to invest in Mozambique's crop potential.

At first look this makes sense. Soybean are one of the country's top 5 imports in terms of volume and value. With an increasing trade deficit, it makes sense to promote the crop as an import substitute and, in the future, as an export to satisfy growing world demand for the commodity.

Another good reason to promote soy is that the soil type in the north renders it unsuitable for other cash crops. Like the Cerrados in the 70's, these soils are consider wasteland.

In terms of nutrition, the high caloric and protein content of soybeans is also attractive given the country's high incidence of stunting. In theory, soybeans could play an important role in meeting the caloric requirements of Mozambicans while generating cash to access other products.

However, little evidence exist about the positive linkages between agricultural growth and reduction in chronic malnutrition. Although it may seem intuitive to think that higher food availability and/or increase incomes will improve diets, the link between those hasn't quite been demonstrated by robust studies. Moreover, most soybean production is used for livestock feed and the processing for human consumption requires a more complex value chain that the country currently lacks.

So the question remains: Would soybean serve as an engine of economic growth, providing much needed cash, calories, and employment for thousands of Mozambicans or would the project be added to the long list of failed mono-culture promotion initiatives in the past few decades? For now the jury is still out. Stay tuned.