When you board Mozambique’s national carrier, Linhas Aéreas de Moçambique, you will most likely be given small blue packets of peanuts to munch as the jet whisks you from the country’s capital, Maputo, to as far afield as Europe. Sugar, salt or chilli flavour. Take your pick.

Mozambican entrepreneur Lucia Bebane has a budding peanut business despite the challenges for small businesspeople. / Johannes Myburgh/IPS

The snack, also available in bright orange packaging, is called Ndoiiim, a shortened version of the Portuguese amendoim, which simply means peanuts. And it is the brainchild of Lucia Bebane, an entrepreneur who is carving out a place for her small company in this southern African country despite the harsh conditions for businesspeople here.

Bebane’s story is unique in Mozambique, where small and medium enterprises (SMEs) contribute up to 70 percent of GDP. But despite this, SMEs here do not produce much or make significant profits.

The National Statistics Institute estimates that the country’s per capita GDP was just 423 dollars in 2010. In contrast, per capita GDP in neighbouring South Africa was almost 25 times more, at 10,700 dollars, in 2010.

It is an economic climate in which many companies fail.

“To start something is hard. There are some entrepreneurs in this country, but Mozambicans have a tendency to imitate what others do,” says Bebane.

For example, the traders who roam Maputo’s streets all sell the same peanuts in the same bags.

Three years ago the 54-year-old former secretary saw the traders and had an idea to process the locally-grown peanut into a product that can compete with the best on the market.

“It was almost impossible … because no one had done it here before,” she explains as a peanut toaster whines loudly in the small factory outside her office.

Bebane is the first Mozambican to roast and package peanuts on an industrial scale here. Whereas peanut sellers manually roast the nuts and pack them by hand, she was the first to import roasting and packaging machines and thereby mechanise the entire process.

Mozambique is one of the world’s poorest countries: over 54 percent of the population is living below the poverty line, according to the country’s Millennium Development Goals report to the United Nations in 2010.

It also lacks the industries and infrastructure which are taken for granted elsewhere. There are no roads linking factories to markets, the electricity supply is often unstable, and there are no machinery manufacturers, forcing Bebane to import the machines she needed for her business.

But a few years after her company started “in a timid manner,” production is now almost completely mechanised. Raw peanuts are trucked in from the northern city of Nampula, which is about 1,400 kilometres from Maputo.

When the peanuts arrive, Bebane’s three permanent employees sort the best from the rest. One machine roasts and flavours the peanuts, and another packages them in the bright orange plastic bags that have become part of her now-visible brand.

But despite selling her peanuts to the country’s national airline, Bebane says that she still barely manages to pay the bills and is waiting to make a profit.

Economist João Mosca from the country’s Pedagogical University says that this is typical of the country’s small businesses.

“Mozambique’s economy is growing, which means there are more and better business opportunities. However, there isn’t an entrepreneurial tradition in modern-day formal companies.”

Mozambique’s economy grew by a whopping 7.3 percent in 2011, but companies have not grown with it.

“Companies are generally not very modernised and aren’t used to working in competitive environments. That’s why they are not competitive themselves,” Mosca tells IPS.

Throughout Mozambique’s modern history small businesses have had it rough. During colonialism under Portugal, Mozambican traders could not develop. The country adopted socialism after independence in 1975 and actively suppressed free enterprise, explains Mosca.

Entrepreneurship only emerged in the late 1980s to a limited extent, but then politicians grabbed the opportunity to monopolise the economy, he says.

“This emergence was politicised so that politicians had privileged access to privatised companies, many of them sold at symbolic prices. These businesspeople formed economic interest groups with sweeping protection against public policy, access to credit and selective law enforcement,” he says.

So in order to get as far as she has, Bebane has had to avoid the pitfalls of a corrupt and nepotistic system and raise her own capital.

The report “Corruption Assessment: Mozambique” commissioned in 2005 by USAID, the U.S. government agency providing economic and humanitarian assistance, pointed to “favouritism and nepotism in public appointments and procurements, conflicts of interest and insider dealing that benefit friends, relatives and political allies, and political party and electoral decisions that reduce democratic choices and citizen participation.”

So entrepreneurs like Bebane, who are less well connected, struggle to find the money to breathe life into their companies.

“Another problem is not the lack of ideas, but the risk of entering the market. You have no family to guarantee loans, you have to borrow from the bank,” says Bebane. “I had to put up my house as collateral.”

More needs to be done before the country’s smaller businesses start making money and raise people from below the poverty line, says Mosca.

But the task is daunting.

“We need to improve the business environment – especially access to credit and the cost of borrowing money – reduce corruption and institutional disorder, and create a more open and competitive market. We need to train human resources, with specific attention to quality,” he says.

Teaming up with companies from outside Mozambique could be healthy for the business sector, Mosca says.

“Partnerships with foreign business can be a way to speed up the birth of entrepreneurial and competitive capitalism,” he tells IPS.

Bebane is not merely waiting for her business to improve. She is searching outside Mozambique’s borders for security and a business partner who will hopefully help propel her towards success.

“I am running from one end to the other, looking at China, looking at Brazil, looking for a permanent partner.”

Over 100,000 people in Mozambique are still recovering from losing their homes and crops, and from being cut off from schools and shops after a tropical storm and cyclone hit the southern African country in January. But the worst may not be over as another dangerous cyclone is expected to make landfall Friday evening as emergency stocks run low.

Drainage systems in Mozambique’s capital Maputo struggle to cope with rivers flowing into the city and high rainfall that leave streets flooded. Credit: Johannes Myburgh/IPS

Cyclone Giovanna, equivalent to a category four hurricane – the same intensity as Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the United States in 2005 – hit Madagascar over the weekend, leaving 65 people dead and 11,000 people homeless. It is expected to strike southern Mozambique on Feb. 17 with maximum speeds of 100 to 150 kilometres per hour.

“As the tropical cyclone approaches Inhambane, we are expecting a high risk of damage for some districts around Inhambane town,” said Sergio Buque, Mozambique’s National Institute of Meteorology’s chief forecaster.

The storm will also affect several other areas including Zavala, Morrumbene and Massinga in Inhambane province.

The country is still recovering from the death of 40 people when two storms struck in close succession mid-January. This year’s death toll is already more than last year’s tally of 30.

“A total of 108,048 people have been affected by tropical storm Dando and cyclone Funso,” said the United Nations Humanitarian Country Team (HCT).

Lola Castro, head of the HCT, said preparations for the cyclone season began in October last year but already stocks are running low because of January’s storms.

“Unfortunately at this moment the stocks we have in the country of different items are getting lower because we had to (provide aid) to the Southern Provinces and Zambezia,” she said.

Basic items, like plastic sheeting for houses, are need.

“Also, equipment for water and sanitation because the latrines were destroyed so people need to use chlorine to make sure that the water does not contain water borne diseases. “We are also looking for seeds … be it rice, beans or maize,” Castro said.

This year almost 98,000 hectares of crops were destroyed in January.

Giovanna is expected to make landfall as the World Food Programme plans to give emergency food to 83,424 people affected by January’s storms, half of who have already received some nutrition.

“Distributions have been completed in Nicoadala and Manganja da Costa, and are ongoing in Chinde and
 Pebane (in central Zambezia province) and Maputo province,” the HCT told IPS in a written response to questions.

“Each family received or will receive 50 kilogrammes of maize for one month.”

In January, Cyclone Funso reached category 4 intensity, however, it veered away from the mainland and struck in the Mozambique channel southeast of central city Beira.

At the time torrential rains kept residents in Maputo indoors and the capital’s waterside was swamped as drainage systems struggled to channel the waters to the sea.

Incessant rains in neighbouring countries also drove up river levels flowing into Mozambique. The Komati River flooded, washing away 50 metres of Mozambique’s main North-South highway, the EN1, 100 km north of Maputo. For a few days the vast country was cut off from its capital by road and the United States issued a travel warning to Americans until the road was reopened on Jan. 24.

Though the two storms affected thousands, the situation was not as devastating as 2009, when two tropical storms hit the country’s central coast and left over 520,000 people dependent on food aid.

Still, Mozambique is the only African country dangerously vulnerable to natural disasters, it was announced last year during the U.N. climate change talks in Durban, South Africa.

In the last two decades Mozambique suffered 50 extreme weather conditions, which cost it 1745 lives, and 96 million dollars in total, delegates at talks were told.

The Southern African country scored 19th in terms of death and losses relative to its population size and GDP from flooding, drought, heat waves and severe storms from 1991 to 2010, according to the Global Climate Risk Index (GCRI), an NGO based in Germany.

However, Mozambicans, most of whom are subsistence farmers with low-lying crop fields, are still utterly at the mercy of the forces of nature.

“People always will be affected due to natural disasters in Mozambique, as it is a disaster-prone country, but if warned on time the level of the crisis can be minimised,” said the HCT.

“The numbers of affected populations has been reducing over the last 12 years. The disasters may augment due to climate change, however Mozambique is becoming more and more equipped to prevent and respond to those events.”

The country’s National Disaster Management Institute was announced the best national disaster management body last year by the U.N.-managed forum, Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction.

“Now, 12 years since the floods of 2000/2001, the scale of damage to both infrastructures and civilians has been vastly reduced as a result of contingency planning, preparedness activities and investment in early warning systems,” Castro told IPS.

Buque said that people have already been alerted to Friday’s impending storm.

“We are now disseminating information to the people about the areas of risk and what they have to do. They also have to follow the update of information from the disaster management authority, water authority and even from community and local government,” he said.

The central and provincial authorities have trained community disaster preparedness groups to help people evacuate their homes in case of floods or storms.

Castro said that although Mozambique is better prepared for the hurricane season, more could be done to ensure that there is less devastation.

“The decentralised level authorities require more equipment and more training. They also require boats, which could help them evacuate populations in case they become isolated. Also, the use of radio to disseminate information using local languages will mean less people are affected,” she added.

The tropical storm season is expected to last until March and Buque said the National Institute of Meteorology are on the alert for more storms.

“We are still expecting more tropical storms to come but we are not sure if they are going to reach us or not,” Buque said.

*Additional reporting by Zukiswa Zimela in Johannesburg.