Population density is high in rural Mozambique. Credit: Courtesy of União Nacional de Camponeses

By Amos Zacarias
NAMPULA, Mozambique , Dec 28 2013 (IPS)

Rodolfo Razão, an elderly small farmer in Mozambique, obtained an official land usage certificate for his 10 hectares in 2010, but he has only been able to use seven. The rest was occupied by a South African company that grows soy, maize and beans on some 10,000 hectares in the northeast of the country.

He got nowhere filing a complaint with the authorities in the district of Monapo, where he lives, in the province of Nampula. And at the age of 78, he can’t wait much longer.

Brígida Mohamad, a 50-year-old widow, is worried about one of her seven children, whose land was also invaded by a company.

“My son has nowhere to grow his crops; our ‘machambas’ [farms] aren’t for sale,” she complained when she met with IPS in Nacololo, the village in Monapo where she has lived her whole life.

These are two cases that help explain the fear among small farmers regarding the Programme of Triangular Cooperation for Agricultural Development of the Tropical Savannahs of Mozambique (ProSavana), which is backed by the cooperation agencies of Brazil (ABC) and Japan (JICA).

Inspired by the technology for tropical agriculture developed in Brazil, ProSavana is aimed at increasing production in the Nacala Corridor, a 14.5-million-hectare area in central and northern Mozambique that has agricultural potential similar to the Cerrado region – Brazil’s savannah.Of the 4.5 million inhabitants of the Corridor, 80 percent live in rural areas, representing much higher population density than in Brazil and other countries, where the countryside has lost much of its population as agriculture has modernised.

Of the 4.5 million inhabitants of the Corridor, 80 percent live in rural areas, representing much higher population density than in Brazil and other countries, where the countryside has lost much of its population as agriculture has modernised.

But in certain parts of the Corridor, it is possible to go two kilometres without seeing a house, as the families who depend on subsistence farming are spread out and isolated, on farms averaging 1.5 hectares in size.

Cassava is the basis of the local diet. The small farmers also grow maize, pumpkins, sunflowers and sweet potatoes for their own consumption, as well as cash crops: cotton, tobacco and cashew nuts.

The prospect of turning the Corridor into the country’s breadbasket, where agricultural exports are facilitated by the Nacala port on the Indian Ocean, is expected to intensify conflicts over land by attracting companies focused on large-scale, high-yield production on immense estates that displace traditional farming populations.

The arrival of these big investors is a terrible thing, Mohamad said. She is opposed not only to the changes directly brought about by ProSavana, but to others that could be accelerated due to the programme’s influence.

The coordinator of ProSavana, Calisto Bias, told IPS that peasant farmers will not lose their land. He added that the main objective of the programme is to support farmers living in the Corridor and help improve their production techniques.

But Sheila Rafi, natural resources officer with Livaningo, a Mozambican environmental organisation, said the way of life of local communities will be disrupted because the investors will bring in new employer-employee relations as local people produce crops for the companies, and monoculture will undermine the tradition of “producing a little of everything for their own diet.”

Generating jobs by means of investment and value chains is one of ProSavana’s stated missions. Another is modernising and diversifying agriculture with a view to boosting productivity and output, according to the website created by the Agriculture Ministry.

But the greatest fear, the biggest threat, is land-grabbing. Many are trying to protect their land by obtaining the “land usage right” based on customary occupancy (known as DUAT). But the certificate does not actually guarantee a thing, local farmers told IPS.

Under the laws of this southeast African nation, all land belongs to the state and cannot be sold or mortgaged. Farmers can apply to the government for a DUAT for up to 50 years.

Some 250 small farmers in Nacololo gathered Dec. 11 outside the home of the local chief to demand explanations about the alleged grabbing of nearly 600 hectares of land by Suni, a South African company.

The district of Malema, 230 km from the city of Nampula, is also experiencing turbulent times. Major agribusiness companies like Japan’s Nitori Holding Company operate in that area. Nitori was granted a concession to grow cotton on 20,000 hectares of land, and the people who live there will be resettled elsewhere.

Another of the companies is Agromoz (Agribusiness de Moçambique SA), a joint venture between Brazil, Mozambique and Portugal, which is producing soy on 10,000 hectares.

The lack of information from the government has exacerbated worries about what is going to happen. “We only heard from the media and civil society organisations that there’s a programme called ProSavana; the government hasn’t told us anything yet,” said Razão.

Costa Estevão, president of the Nampula Provincial Nucleus of Small-Scale Farmers, said “We aren’t opposed to development, but we want policies that benefit small farmers and we want them to explain to us what ProSavana is.”

The triangular agreement, which was reached in 2011 and combines Japan’s import market with Brazil’s know-how and Mozambique’s land, has already proved fertile ground for controversy.

Social organisations from the three countries have mobilised against ProSavana, rejecting it or demanding that it be reformulated.

Brazil wants “to export a model that is in conflict,” said Fátima Mello, director of international relations for the Brazilian organisation FASE and an active participant in the People’s Triangular Conference on ProSavana, held in Maputo in August.

Millions of landless peasants, a major rural exodus, fierce land disputes, deforestation and unprecedented use of pesticides and herbicides have been the result of the model that has prioritised agribusiness, monoculture for export and large corporations, say activists who defend family farming as one of the keys to food security.

An important component of that model is the Japan-Brazil Cooperation Programme for Development of the Cerrado, which got underway in 1978 in central Brazil and is now serving as an inspiration for ProSavana.

The technology that will be transferred to farmers in the Nacala Corridor comes from Brazil.

The Brazilian governmental agricultural research agency, Embrapa, is training extension workers and staff at Mozambique’s Institute for Agricultural Research (IIAM), in ProSavana’s first project, which will run from 2011 to 2016.

Brazilian participation is also decisive in the rest of the components of the programme: the master plan assessing the rural areas and crops with good potential in the Corridor, and the project for extension and models.

“The breadth and grandeur of the ProSavana Programme contrast with the failure of the law and the total absence of a deep, broad, transparent and democratic public debate,” says an open letter signed by 23 Mozambican social organisations and movements and 43 international organisations.

The letter, addressed to the leaders of Brazil, Japan and Mozambique and signed May 23 in Maputo, also called for the environmental impact assessment required by law.

The signatories demanded the immediate suspension of the programme, an official dialogue with all affected segments of society, a priority on family farming and agroecology, and a policy based on food sovereignty.

They also said that all of the resources allocated to ProSavana should be “reallocated to efforts to define and implement a National Plan for the Support of Sustainable Family Farming.”

Oil storage facilities in Bentiu in South Sudan's Unity State. Japan is heavily reliant on oil and gas imports. Credit: Charlton Doki/IPS

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
YOKOHAMA, Japan, Jun 4 2013 (IPS)

Acutely aware of China’s strong presence in resource-rich Africa, Japan, the world’s third largest economy, is beefing up its relations with the continent. Participants at a high-level donor conference hosted by Japan this week stressed the need for closer engagement, not through the traditional grants and assistance loans that have hitherto defined the relationship, but rather through trade and investment led by the Japanese private sector.

“Africa’s growth is registering, on average, more than six percent annually, and the continent represents a growing population and important regional market,” Mokoto Ito, spokesperson for African development at Japan’s foreign ministry, said at the fifth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) that concluded today in Yokohama, capital of the Kanagawa Prefecture.

“Japan can play an active role by investing in infrastructure and providing industrial technology to boost manufactured goods through capacity building,” Mokoto added.

His words clearly reflect Japan’s domestic interests – for instance, Africa’s natural resources are vital for Japan’s energy needs that are heavily dependent on gas and oil imports.

They also point to a sense of competition with neighbouring China, whose trade receipts with the African continent hit 138.6 billion dollars last year according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), far outstripping the 30-billion-dollar bilateral trade partnership between Japan and Africa.

TICAD, a two-decade old forum that seeks to create dialogue between African and Asian partners, supports initiatives that will simultaneously boost African ownership and partnership with key Asian economies. It enjoys the backing of major players like the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the African Union.

Addressing the leaders of some 40 countries who gathered here from Jun. 1-3, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced that, in addition to Japan’s official development assistance (ODA) of 14 billion dollars, Japan would also offer up to “32 billion dollars in public and private investment in support of Africa’s growth.”

In what experts have identified as a jab at China’s controversial presence in Africa – where 127 billion dollars worth of investment in extractive and industrial projects has been labelled a “resource-grab”, without corresponding attention paid to human development indicators– Abe promised not to “explore and dig resources simply to bring them to Japan. We will support Africa so that African natural resources will lead to African economic growth,” he said.

Abe also urged greater transparency in business transactions and promised to do more to protect the rights and security of some 30,000 Africans living and working in Japan.

But despite these assurances and expressions of goodwill, some experts are disappointed that participants did not tackle the prospect of a closer relationship from a human rights perspective.

For Akio Shibata, head of the Natural Resource Research Institute, a think tank that focuses on agricultural development, TICAD’s message that growth can be achieved through private investment and trade spells danger for the vast rural populations that continue to grapple with abject poverty across the African continent; according to the World Bank, 48.8 percent of people in sub-Saharan Africa still live below the poverty line.

“I was disappointed because TICAD has left out pressing issues like high levels of maternal mortality, environmental protection and equal wealth distribution, which are also keys to sustainable development,” he told IPS.

He believes that promises to extend Japan’s technological expertise to support structural reform will pave the way for commercialised mining and agricultural, which could negatively affect small-scale farmers, who comprise over 70 percent of the populations in most African countries.

“A focus on developing large-scale agricultural projects is a danger for the small-holder farmer who faces the risk of big companies entering rural agriculture and leaving them landless or without jobs,” he said.

The professor was speaking at a session led by rural farmers in Mozambique’s Tete province who are protesting the Triangular Cooperation Programme for the Agricultural Development of Tropical Savannahs in Mozambique, also known as ‘ProSavana’, that will convert swathes of the savannah, particularly along Mozambique’s northern Nacala Development Corridor, into a commercial agricultural enterprise that will produce soya beans for export.

Mozambique is currently recording gross national product (GNP) growth rates of seven percent, but is listed as one of the three worst performing African countries on the human development index, which tracks achievements in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), including health and education equality.

Augusto Mafigo, a grain farmer who leads a union network in Mozambique, says farmers have stepped up protests against ProSavana out of fear that they will lose their small plots of farmland when companies start to acquire land for the project. Considering the fact that 80 percent of the labour force in this country of 23 million people is comprised of small-scale farmers, such a scenario would be disastrous for millions of peasants.

Still, African delegates welcomed the idea of a more active Japan, engaged in developing the continent. “Japan brings quality technology and can play an important balancing role to China’s heavy (hand) in African countries,” Tseliso Nteso, an official of Lesotho’s ministry of finance, told IPS.

Other country leaders expressed hope that TICAD’s message of increased public-private partnerships could signal the beginning of a new development paradigm, one that would be “kinder” to the continent’s vast marginalised populations, especially in the sub-Saharan region.

Zuzana Brixiova, economist at the African Development Bank, added that the new and improved relationship between Japan and Africa might also be able to meet pressing global issues like depleting natural resources, climate change and expanding inequality, by focusing on sustainable, rather than extractive, development.

She told IPS it was crucial to set up “stable standards in development that can ensure inclusive and structural reforms in order to produce value added goods.”