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

By William Mapote
MAPUTO, Mar 1 2013 (IPS)

As Mozambique tries to recover from the worst flooding here since 2000, experts have called for a national discussion on water management and how to maximise its usage in favour of long-term sustainable development.

“Mozambique is a downstream destination for regional rivers, but it still has much to do to maximise those potentials into national development, ” Patrício José, a member of Southern African Development Community’s water division, told IPS.

Some 54 percent of Mozambique’s annual surface flow comes from outside the country and because of its geographical location it has always been vulnerable to natural disaster, particularly flooding, according to the Global Water Partnership Africa.

“In recent years we have seen more of the destruction that water can cause than the benefits it brings. And the country has a challenge to do more to better address the water issue and water-related development,” José said.

Here, in Mozambique, water has been both a blessing and a curse.

In 2000, floods affected 2.5 million people. Over the last few months the Limpopo, Save and Inkomati Rivers flooded, their water levels boosted by the rainfall in neighbouring countries like South Africa and Zimbabwe. With the heavy rains came destruction and since October 2012, about 113 people have been killed and 250,000 affected.

Maria Filda is one of those affected. As the 17-year-old looks down at her newborn baby, she is just glad to be alive. On the day after her baby’s Jan. 13 birth, Filda watched as floods destroyed her house.

“The sound of the rain beating our metal zinc roof was so strong. Suddenly, I saw part of the wall of our house collapsing. I panicked. I carried my daughter in my arms and ran into the sitting room. Before long, my bedroom wall also collapsed,” she told IPS.

Everything she owned, including her baby’s new clothes, was washed away. She now lives in the Força do Povo community school in Hulene suburb, just five kilometers from Mozambique’s capital, Maputo.

Like the rest of the country, Filda is trying to rebuild her life.

The National Institute for Disaster Management evacuated thousands of people from the most-affected provinces of Maputo and Gaza, setting up 16 shelters and providing local communities with food, blankets, water and medicine.

The largest number of people affected by the floods is from Chihaquelane, in Gaza Province. Shelters there are crowded with almost 100,000 people, as authorities struggle to cope with the large numbers.

The destruction wrought by the floods is stark proof of the country’s failing infrastructure and neglected dams, according to José.

“The country has a few dams, but most them are inoperative or work poorly,” José said. “This is one of the problems … because the infrastructure does not work properly to divert the water and manage the overflow from the rivers. We need to improve their functioning and management,” he explained.

The flooding, however, creates a deceptive impression of Mozambique’s water availability. According to the United Nations Environmental Programme, the availability of freshwater in Mozambique is expected to decrease by over half by 2025.

As water stress is expected to become an increasing problem, it has made experts question the feasibility of forestry projects that could affect the country’s water balance.

The government has granted concessions to foreign investors on 250,000 hectares of land in Niassa Province in northern Mozambique, with the intention of developing the country into one of Africa’s biggest suppliers of pine and eucalyptus trees for commercial purposes.

While the land allocation has given rise to allegations of landgrabs and the displacement of local communities, water experts are also concerned that the forestry projects could use up a significant portion of the country’s water supply.

This is because eucalyptus trees, for example, need between 800 and 1,200 millimetres (mm) of water per year to grow.

While there is considerable variation in rainfall across different regions in the country, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the U.N. says that the mean annual rainfall ranges from 800 mm to 1,000 mm along the coast and between 1,000 mm and 2,000 mm in the northern region.

Professor Álvaro Carmo Vaz, a Mozambican water specialist, has no doubt that the water balance in Niassa Province will change as a result.

“If you put that kind of fast-growing species like pine and eucalyptus there, which have a much stronger capacity of absorbing water, it means there will be less water flowing into the river. Because what really happens is that you are using the water before it goes into the river,” he told IPS. He said that the effects of the forestry plantations would have on water supply needed to be carefully analysed in order to find ways to deal with the possible reduced availability.

“Water should be a key issue in the future,” Assistant Professor for Irrigation and Drainage at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, Rui Miguel Ribeiro, told IPS. “Looking at the specific case of Niassa Province, obviously it will change the water balance,” he said, adding that assessments needed to be done to confirm this.

Charles Mchomboh, the project manager at Chikweti Forests, a company the government leased 100,000 hectares of land to in Niassa Province, however, told IPS that there was nothing to be concerned about.

With its plans to grow seven million trees per year, Chikweti Forests currently is one of a total of six forestry companies active in Niassa Province.

Ambrosio Manjate, 55, a smallholder farmer from Palmeira in Southern Mozambique. Farmers’ unions believe that soon land will become very scarce for locals. Credit: Johannes Myburgh/IPS

By William Mapote
MAPUTO, Feb 22 2013 (IPS)

Mozambican farmers’ unions believe that soon land will become very scarce for locals as the government leases more and more of it to foreign agribusinesses – thus displacing thousands of rural communities and smallholder farmers with no official title deeds to their land.

“As the UNAC (Mozambique’s National Peasants Union) we think that in the very short term land will become scarcest for Mozambicans because the government is attracting foreign investors, arguing that we have huge unused land, João Palate, a spokesperson for UNAC, told IPS.

Official figures from the Investment Promotion Centre estimate that Mozambique has around 19 million hectares (ha) of land with a potential for agriculture, forestry and cattle – though only 5.6 million ha are being utilised.

“But what happens, in fact,” Palate explained, “when investors come their appetite is centered on land already being used by locals.” 

Some 64 percent of Mozambicans currently live in rural areas where agriculture is the main form of income and 45 percent live on less than a dollar a day, according to human rights organisation FIAN International.

Over the last two years, the Mozambican government approved more than 10 new foreign agribusiness development projects. The biggest is ProSavana, where more than 10 million ha was awarded to Brazilian and Japanese investors.

“We have cases like the one in Niassa Province, where around four entire districts were leased to Chikweti Forests, expelling thousand of smallholders who had been there for many generations,” Palate said.

Chikweti Forests, a subsidiary of Swedish-based investment fund Global Solidarity Forest Fund, established tree plantations on 13,000 ha.

According to the country’s constitution, the land is owned by the state and cannot be sold but, “the right of use and profit from the land is conferred on individuals or groups…”

According the Mozambique’s land laws, people can apply for the right of use and to profit from land with the provincial government, if it is less than 1,000 ha. For land larger than 10,000 ha, applications are required to be submitted to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. According to the law, land can also be allocated to local communities who have occupied it for more than five years.

Palate underlined that land is a sovereignty issue and food production ought to be dominated by locals empowered with knowledge of better farming practices.

ProSavana, for example, are going to grow soybeans, he said. “Which means their business is focused on export — if so, they are not going to resolve our (food security) problems.”

The ProSavana project will be implemented in the Nacala Development Corridor, an area between Nampula, Zambézia and Niassa Provinces in northern Mozambique. Land marked out for the project is currently occupied by thousand of smallholder farmers.

The government, meanwhile, has repeatedly denied claims that smallholder farmers would lose their land in the deal.

Unfulfilled Promises

Mother of three, Delfina Sidónio, has lost count of the number of times she was promised compensation for the loss of her traditional land, she told IPS.

She lost her five-hectare farm in Ruace community in Zambézia Province to Portuguese agribusinesses Quifel when the company was awarded 10,000 ha of land there by the government. Operating under the project name Hoyo-Hoyo the company plans to grow soy and sunflowers for biofuel production.

“I was expelled from my land, which I inherited from my parents, with promises of new land to work on and 680 dollars in compensation. Since I was expelled, one year ago, all I was paid is about a quarter of the amount they promised to pay, and there is no information about the new land to work on,” Sidónio told IPS.

Sidónio is one of more than 200 smallholders who lost their land in the deal.

“Our life was all in that land. That land gave us food and supplies – our life style,” Ernesto Elias, head of the smallholders’ association forum in Ruace, told IPS.

“At the beginning, the company promised to give us new farming land to build infrastructure, to supply water and to pay compensation according to what we had on the farm,” he recalled, “but after a few months all the promises became lies.”

Fatima José, another smallholder farmer from the area, said she is worried about her immediate future. “The last harvest crops are now finishing in our storehouses and from the next two months we don’t know how we will survive,” she told IPS.

Contacted by IPS, the Quiefel office in Gurue, Zambézia Province, denied the allegations. “We are preparing ourselves to fulfill the remaining promises done during negotiations with the communities until next June,” a company official said. “And from then on, nobody will talk about land grabbing in Ruace, but will talk about sustainable cooperation between community and investors to develop agribusiness.”

Mahomed Valá, the national director of Agrarian Services in the Ministry of Agriculture, told IPS that the government is aware of the Ruace community complaint. But all the government could do at this stage is to call for dialogue between the contenders, he said.

“Basically the conflict is concerning unfulfilled promises. The company promised land for resettlement, seed and inoculation to support the smallholders, some infrastructures, among other facilities, but they did not fulfil all the promises. I met the company and advised them to strengthen their dialogue with the community and fulfill their promises,” Valá said.

A small big problem

“The important thing to be done to avoid land conflicts is to adopt win-win solutions,” Rafael Uaiene, Assistant Professor in International Development at the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics at Michigan State University told IPS.

Mozambique is still a poor country and needs investment to explore its potential, according to Uaiene. “But the country has to protect the land rights of communities and to promote investment in agriculture, as well.”

Win-win means leasing the land to maximise its use, according to the scholar, “And in the case of land that was being used by local communities, they have to be given compensation as the law defines and be integrated into the cycle of the investments,” Uaiene said.