Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
18 May 2009
Maputo — The population of the southern Mozambican province of Gaza only grew at 1.54 per cent per annum between the last two population censuses, in 1997 and 2007, despite relatively high birth and fertility rates.
According to the definitive results for Gaza from the 2007 census, which the National Statistics Institute (INE) has now made available, there were 1,226,272 people living in the province in August 2007. This was 163,892 more than ten years earlier. In a decade the population of Gaza had grown by 15.4 per cent - an average of 1.54 per cent a year.
This is considerably lower than the national population growth rate of 2.4 per cent a year, and much lower than the growth rate of nearly five per cent a year in neighbouring Maputo province.
Yet the Gaza gross birth rate has risen from 38 to 40 births per 1,000 inhabitants between 1997 and 2007. The fertility rate has also risen: in 1997 the average adult woman in Gaza had five children. The figure in 2007 was 5.3 children.
These figures suggest that a lot of people have left Gaza. Indeed, while the sharp rise in the population of Maputo province, particularly its capital, the city of Matola, is due to migration from Maputo city, some must also be due to people drifting in from Gaza.
There is a long tradition of Gaza men emigrating to find work in South Africa, and this may have increased recently. One result is that the majority of Gaza households are headed by women - 50.2 per cent, compared with 49.8 per cent headed by men.
The age structure of the Gaza population shows a shortage of adults. 44.9 per cent of the population is under 15 years old, 49.9 per cent are aged between 15 and 64, and 5.2 per cent are aged 65 and above. Compare this with Maputo province, where 40.7 per cent are under 15 years old, 55.8 per cent are aged between 15 and 63, and 3.5 per cent are 65 and over.
Gaza is also suffering heavily from the AIDS pandemic. The census found that 40.7 per cent of deaths in the province were HIV/AIDS related. AIDS has thus easily overtaken malaria as the main killer in the province. 18.8 per cent of deaths were attributed to malaria, and 4.4 per cent to respiratory infections.
Gaza remains an overwhelmingly rural province. Only 9.5 per cent of the population lives in the provincial capital, Xai-Xai. 78.1 per cent of the labour force works in the primary sector (agriculture, fisheries, forestry and mining - and there is very little mining or forestry in Gaza). Only 6.8 per cent work in industry and construction, and the remaining 15 per cent in services.
The literacy rate has improved considerably between the two censuses. In 1997 52.7 per cent of adults in Gaza could not read or write. By 2007 the figure had fallen to 38.5 per cent. But there are sharp gender differences. Only 23.5 per cent of Gaza men are illiterate, but the figure rises to 48.8 per cent among women.
As expected, Gaza lags well behind Maputo - in Maputo city, the illiteracy rate has fallen to 9.8 per cent, and in Maputo province it is 22 per cent.
25.5 per cent of all Gaza children aged between 6 and 17 are not at school. Here the numbers are fairly similar between boys (25.9 per cent) and girls (25.2 per cent).
And while in both Maputo city and province, there has been a sharp rise in the number of people speaking the official language, Portuguese, and even giving Portuguese as their mother tongue, in Gaza the Xichangana language is absolutely dominant.
Gaza is the most ethnically homogenous province in the country, and this is probably why 87.2 per cent of respondents gave their mother tongue as Xichangana, compared with just 4.8 per cent who said their mother tongue was Portuguese. 88.1 per cent said the language they spoke most commonly at home was Xichangana: 5.5 per cent said it was Portuguese. (55.2 per cent of people in Maputo city and 34.8 per cent in Maputo province said the language they spoke most commonly was Portuguese).
As for housing conditions, the number of homes with electricity has risen from 4.8 per cent in 1997 to 12.3 per cent in 2007. Improvements in water supply have been more modest. 10.2 per cent of homes had piped water (inside or outside the house) in 1997, and the 2007 census found the figure had risen to 12.4 per cent. Sanitation remains poor - 29.2 per cent of homes have no basic sanitation, not even a pit latrine.
As for durable household goods, 48.9 per cent of homes have a radio, and 15.1 per cent have a television. So more homes have TV sets than have electricity. Some of these televisions may run off batteries, and in some cases households may plug their TV into a neighbour's electricity supply (and pay him for this service). But there may also be houses that have illegal connections to the power grid which their owners were reluctant to admit to the census takers.
Only 3.9 per cent of Gaza households own a car, but 18.7 per cent have bicycles. Internet penetration is minimal - only 0.6 per cent of households own a computer. And 45 per cent of households have none of these goods at all, not even a radio. 15.2 per cent of Gaza adults have a mobile phone.
As for religious beliefs, 37.8 per cent said they belonged to Zionist churches (African Christian sects that often display a mixture of Christianity and traditional animist beliefs). 15.8 per cent said they were evangelical protestants, 15.4 per cent were catholics and three per cent were Anglicans. 19.8 per cent said they had no religion - but this means no organised religion, and therefore includes not only atheists and agnostics, but also followers of traditional beliefs, that are not centred on any churches.
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