19 June 2008
Maputo — Despite high levels of economic growth, malnutrition worsened substantially in Mozambique between 1997 and 2006.
The rise over these years in the malnutrition rate among children under the age of five from 36 to 46 per cent was the sombre backdrop for Wednesday's launch, at a Maputo Symposium of Food and Nutritional Security, of the government's Second National Food Security Strategy, and its Plan of Action, which will run from this year to 2015.
Addressing the opening session of the symposium, President Armando Guebuza stressed that "with hunger, nobody can make full use of their strength. With hunger there is no work, but because it is with work that we can do away with hunger, we have to find and apply formulas that ensure this work, whenever hunger is anticipated".
Guebuza also stressed the damaging effects of malnutrition on the human immune system, and hence on the capacity of people to resist disease.
"It affects children's growth and their school performance", he said, "and it is also responsible for child mortality. Among women it contributes to complications during and after birth, which may result in death".
The low weight at birth of many Mozambican children, he added, was the direct result of the malnutrition of their mothers during pregnancy.
Guebuza argued that nutritional problems will not be solved merely by increasing agricultural production and productivity, since lack of food security does not arise simply from a deficit in production. Also crucial was the way in which production is managed, and how the goods produced are placed on the consumer markets - such matters directly influenced solutions to food security questions.
He also stressed that eradicating malnutrition involves "the adoption of dietary habits which prioritise a healthier and more varied diet". Availability of food did not in itself mean that households were eating a balanced diet, with all the nutrients required.
On this issue, Guebuza stressed the role of schools, training centres and health units in persuading people to adopt healthy dietary habits.
The President suggested that the sharp rise in international grain prices should be a stimulus to higher production by Mozambican farmers. The confidence of peasant farmers should be built up, he stressed, eliminating the current situation of some provinces having a food surplus, while others are in deficit.
"Vigorous measures" are needed to face the challenges, he said, involving the allocation of more resources to agriculture, and prioritizing the country's rural districts as centres of production.
The representative in Mozambique of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisations (FAO), Maria Jose Zimmerman, told the symposium that Mozambique's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) would have grown by an extra three per cent had it not been for the reduction in individuals' productive capacity because they were malnourished.
Mozambique has won praise for annual growth rates of seven per cent or more, considered as very high growth for a non-oil producer, but Zimmerman argued that without malnutrition, the annual growth rate would be 10 per cent.
The Ministry of Agriculture has even put a price tag on malnutrition, claiming that it costs 185.3 million US dollars a year (broken down in a cost of 98 million dollars from protein and calory deficiencies, 32.3 million dollars for iodine deficiency, and 55 million dollars for iron deficiency which causes anemia).
The Ministry's Technical Secretariat on Food and Nutritional Security (SETSAN) points out that, with the current situation, resources that could have been used productively are channeled into keeping malnourished people alive. Furthermore, people seriously affected by hunger are more vulnerable to disease, and thus put a greater strain on the limited resources of the Mozambican health service.
Zimmerman stressed that the causes of food vulnerability are multiple. They include reduced access to foodstuffs due to a combination of low income, high prices and poor availability of food, limited access to clean water and to health care, and low educational level.
She said that, given the complexity of the malnutrition problem, joint work is needed between the government, civil society bodies, the private sector and other stakeholders in order to produce adequate responses.
Zimmerman suggested that some of the actions Mozambique could undertake to reduce food insecurity included increasing the capacity of its institutions to coordinate and effectively implement food and nutritional security programmes, and to combine increased production with public assistance programmes for vulnerable groups.
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