Maputo — The Mozambican government's Food and Nutritional Security Technical Secretariat (SETSAN) on Friday announced that the number of people "vulnerable to immediate food insecurity" has risen to over 801,000 (about 4.4 per cent of Mozambique's total population).

These people are at risk of severe hunger until next March, when the next harvest is due.

This is the result of a survey by SETSAN's Vulnerability Assessment Group (GAV) undertaken in the first half of October.

The people at risk are in 56 of the country's 128 districts, and the food shortages essentially result from prolonged drought.

This is a substantial increase on the last SETSAN survey, in May, which identified 428,000 people "in extreme food insecurity", and another 159,000 "at risk". Although the areas worst hit by drought are in the south and centre of the country, the SETSAN survey also covers pockets of drought and hunger in the north. All provinces have some districts at risk.

The worst hit province is Tete, in the west, where SETSAN puts the number of drought-affected people at 198,000, followed by Gaza and Inhambane in the south (with 146,000 and 119,000 people affected, respectively).

The central province of Sofala has 84,000 people affected, and the neighbouring province of Manica 59,000.

For the other provinces, the figures are: Maputo (43,000), Zambezia (41,000), Nampula (68,000), Cabo Delgado (30,000) and Niassa (13,000).

The survey found several telltale signs of growing food insecurity. Some of the most important concern livestock: Francisca Cabral of SETSAN, outlining the mission's findings, said people are moving their cattle long distances in attempts to find pasture and water. There are also increased sales of livestock.

Markets in rural areas have food for sale - but prices have risen by between 30 and 100 per cent. Some of this increase is blamed on the fuel prices increases of June.

Cabral said resort to "hunger foods" had been noted. These include animal skins, and wild beans and roots that are not normally consumed.

In parts of the country, people resort to bitter varieties of cassava, which contain cyanide, and can be dangerous if not cooked properly. It is argued that, at times of hunger, people simply do not have the large amounts of time it takes to prepare bitter cassava safely.

Consumption of poorly cooked bitter cassava can lead to paralysis, and cases are no being reported from parts of Zambezia and Nampula provinces.

With their food stocks exhausted, households are now selling their few possessions, or exchanging them for food. Cabral said there were increased sales of bicycles, blankets, radios "and even cell phones".

Water shortages are now dramatic - partly because wells have been poorly maintained. SETSAN found that in some areas 50 per cent of the pumps had broken down.

People are now looking for water by digging holes in dry river beds, Cabral said. Elsewhere people (and this usually means women) walk up to 40 kilometres to fetch water, which they then have to carry back to their homes on their heads.

The crisis leads to increased exploitation of natural resources - including poaching, and deforestation for firewood and charcoal which can be sold or exchanged for food.

Children are dropping out of school, Cabral said, in order to help their parents fetch water and wood fuel.

Yet so far there is no famine. Participants at Friday's meeting argued that Mozambique was not a re-run of Niger, and that vulnerability mitigation measures are having a positive effect.

One interesting statistic is for acute malnutrition among children - for the worst malnutrition is not to be found in the driest areas. Quite the reverse - Gaza and Inhambane, much of which are semi-arid at the best of times, have the lowest child malnutrition rates (less than three per cent). The highest rate, 6.9 per cent, is in Zambezia.

The best explanation for this is that most Gaza and Inhambane households do not rely heavily on farming for their livelihood: these are provinces that have been sending men to the South African gold mines for over a century, and doubtless miners' remittances play a crucial role in household survival.

Access to health and education is better in Gaza and Inhambane than in Zambezia, and this too impacts on malnutrition rates.