Mozambique: They Were Not Asked. Now They Are Asking Parliament To Stop

Mozambique's Tobacco Control Bill is poised for a plenary vote with no impact study, half a day of public consultation, and the voices of nearly one million people completely absent from the debate. The farmers, traders, workers, and communities who depend on this sector — refuse to be silent any longer.

There is a bill moving through the corridors of our Parliament right now that will reshape the lives of hundreds of thousands of Mozambican families. It will determine whether a farmer in Tete can continue to send his children to the school that was built with the support of the tobacco sector. It will determine whether a woman selling loose cigarettes from a small tray in the markets of Nampula can continue to do so, or whether that income — modest as it may seem to those writing laws in Maputo — disappears overnight. It will determine whether a worker in a cigarette manufacturing plant in the capital will still have a job next year.

This bill is the Tobacco Control Bill, approved by the Council of Ministers in February 2026 and referred to Parliament shortly after. The Parliamentary Committees tasked with reviewing it held a single hearing. One organisation was invited to speak. The consultations took less than half a day.

They were not asked. None of them. Not one farmer from the provinces of Tete, Niassa, Zambezia, Manica, or Nampula — the provinces that together grow the crop that feeds this sector. Not one trader from the informal markets where loose cigarettes sustain the daily income of thousands of micro-entrepreneurs. Not one worker from the manufacturing plants. Not one woman from the rural cooperatives. Not one representative from the 37 districts whose local economies are materially shaped by tobacco agriculture.

More than 900,000 Mozambican livelihoods depend on the tobacco value chain. Not one of those people was consulted before this Bill was sent to plenary.

This is not a complaint about the principle of tobacco regulation. Regulation is legitimate. It is the right of Parliament to legislate in the public interest. What is being questioned — with force, and with evidence — is the process by which this particular law has been developed, and the recklessness of rushing it through without the scientific, economic, and democratic foundations that such a consequential piece of legislation demands.

The World They Are Building A Law Without Looking At

Let us be precise about what tobacco means to Mozambique. This is not a marginal activity. This is not a niche crop grown by a few thousand people on the fringes of the economy. Tobacco contributes more than one percent of Mozambique's total GDP. It generates over four hundred million United States dollars in foreign currency earnings every year. It employs or directly sustains more than one hundred thousand farmers — and when you count the transporters, processors, distributors, retailers, equipment suppliers, and seasonal workers who depend on the sector, the number of livelihoods connected to tobacco in this country exceeds nine hundred thousand.

Three large cigarette manufacturers operate in Mozambique. They pay excise taxes that flow into the national treasury. In partnership with local governments, the sector has built more than forty schools in tobacco-growing communities. It administers more than four hundred school feeding programmes that keep children in classrooms. It has drilled more than four hundred boreholes that provide clean water to communities that would otherwise have none.

These are not abstract statistics. These are schools where our children learn. These are the boreholes where our families draw water. These are the programmes that feed our children while their parents work in the fields. The Tobacco Control Bill, in its current form, would prohibit all corporate social responsibility activities by tobacco companies. The day this law enters into force, these schools, these feeding programmes, these boreholes — all of it — must stop.

Forty schools. Four hundred school feeding programmes. Four hundred boreholes. The Bill proposes to shut all of them down. The communities that depend on them were never consulted.

This is not to say any of this to argue that tobacco is harmless. This is not a public health argument. It is a democracy argument, and an economic one. A law that will disrupt over nine hundred thousand livelihoods, cut off foreign currency earnings of four hundred million dollars annually, and eliminate the social infrastructure that the sector has built across five provinces — that law deserves more than half a day of consultation and the testimony of a single business association.

The Voices Parliament Did Not Hear

In the absence of formal hearings, we have gathered the perspectives of those who should have been invited to speak. These are their voices.

A tobacco farmer, Tete Province — cultivating tobacco for 22 years
"I have grown tobacco since my father taught me how. My children go to the school that was built near our fields. When people come from the city to write laws about what I grow, I expect them to at least come and ask me what will happen if those laws take effect. Nobody came. Nobody called. I heard about this bill from a neighbour who heard it on the radio. Is this how a democracy works?" - Tete is Mozambique's largest tobacco-producing province. Smallholder farmers here have no alternative crop of equivalent market value.

A market trader, Nampula — selling loose cigarettes for 11 years
"A pack of cigarettes costs money that many of my customers do not have all at once. They buy one or two sticks. This is how it works in the market — you sell what people can afford to buy. If this law says I cannot sell single cigarettes, I lose my main product overnight. What do they want me to sell instead? Did anyone ask me what I would do? Did anyone sit with us in the market and ask us how we survive? I would have had things to say." - The TCB proposes to ban the sale of cigarettes per stick — a provision that would effectively eliminate the primary retail format of Mozambique's vast informal economy.

A woman tobacco farmer and cooperative member, Niassa Province
"In our cooperative we are forty-two women. We grow tobacco because it is the only crop with a guaranteed buyer, a guaranteed price, and a payment at the end of the season. When we heard there might be a law that affects what we grow, we wanted to know what it said, who wrote it, and whether anyone who looks like us had been asked. The answer to that last question was no. Not one woman from Niassa. Not one woman from our cooperative. We are forty-two women who were invisible to the people writing this law." - Women make up a significant share of Mozambique's smallholder tobacco workforce. They were entirely absent from the parliamentary consultation process.

A manufacturing plant worker, Maputo — employed for 14 years
"I have worked at this plant since I was a young man. My children have grown up on this salary. We are not a large workforce — every job here matters to a family. When legislation is being written that could affect whether this plant continues to operate, whether the economics of the business still make sense, whether investment continues — we should be part of that conversation. Nobody told the union. Nobody consulted the workers. We read about the bill in the newspapers like everyone else." - Three cigarette manufacturers operate in Mozambique, contributing excise revenue and employing a formal industrial workforce.

A convenience shop owner, Sofala Province
"The bill says tobacco products cannot be sold in convenience shops. I was told this by a colleague who had read the text. I want to understand: who decided this? What problem does it solve that removing tobacco from licensed, registered, tax-paying shops — and pushing buyers toward unregistered vendors — actually fixes? I run a legal business. I pay taxes. I comply with every regulation that applies to me. Nobody asked me whether this proposal makes practical sense. It does not." - The TCB proposes to prohibit tobacco sales in convenience stores and duty-free outlets — a measure that would redirect demand to informal and unregulated channels.

A transport contractor working in tobacco logistics, Zambezia Province
"The harvest does not move itself. Trucks, drivers, fuel, warehousing — there is an entire economy behind getting tobacco from the field to the factory and to the port. My company works with several of the large buyers. If the regulatory environment becomes unworkable, if investment leaves, if production falls — I do not wait for a formal study to tell me what happens to my contracts. I know what happens. But nobody asked me what I think, or what the consequences would be for people like me." - Transport, logistics, and warehousing services connected to the tobacco value chain employ thousands across the producing provinces.

A headmaster of a school built with tobacco sector support, Manica Province
"This school was not here before the tobacco company helped build it. We have over three hundred children enrolled. The feeding programme that keeps them attending — because for many, this is the only guaranteed meal of the day — runs because of the sector's support. I am told the new law will prohibit these programmes. I am asking a simple question: what replaces it? Before Parliament votes on this, I want a member of Parliament to come here, stand in this school, look at these children, and tell me what replaces it. Then we can have a conversation." - The CSR prohibition in the TCB would require immediate cessation of all sector-funded educational and social programmes in tobacco-growing communities.

None of these voices were invited to Parliament. None of these realities informed the drafting of the Bill. This is not the standard Mozambique should set for itself.

How Other African Countries Have Done This — And What Mozambique Owes Its Citizens

The question of how to regulate tobacco is not new. Many countries on this continent have grappled with it. Some have done so successfully. Their experience provides a benchmark against which the Mozambican process must be honestly assessed.

Consider South Africa. The Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Bill was introduced to the South African Parliament in 2018. As of the time of writing, the parliamentary committee process has been running for more than six years — and it is still underway. In the course of those years, the committee received more than twenty-one thousand written submissions from individuals, organisations, businesses, health professionals, academics, economists, workers, farmers, and concerned citizens. It held dozens of oral hearing sessions. It commissioned independent research. The South African Ministry of Health conducted a Socio-Economic Impact Assessment — a rigorous, published study of what the proposed regulations would mean for jobs, for tax revenues, for farmers, for the informal economy, and for public health simultaneously.

South Africa is a more developed country with stronger institutional capacity. But the principle at work there is not a function of development level. It is a function of democratic values. The principle is simple: before you pass a law that will materially affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, you consult those people. You study the consequences. You model the trade-offs. You invite disagreement, because disagreement contains information that will make the final law better.

South Africa spent six years consulting 21,000 voices before legislating on tobacco. In Mozambique, a single organisation was heard in less than half a day. This is not a comparison that reflects well on our Parliament.

Now consider Kenya. In 2007, Kenya enacted the Tobacco Control Act. Before doing so, the Kenyan government conducted extensive multi-stakeholder consultations that included health organisations, farmers' groups, industry representatives, retailers, and civil society. The process took years. The resulting legislation was contested and imperfect — as all legislation is — but it was grounded in a documented understanding of the interests at stake. When Kenya later developed its implementing regulations under that Act, it again convened consultative forums with affected parties across the country's major tobacco-growing regions, including the Coast, Nyanza, and Central provinces.

Zambia and Nigeria have followed comparable paths — commissioning economic studies, holding sectoral consultations, and building regulatory frameworks that acknowledge the complex reality of tobacco as both a public health concern and an economic lifeline for farming communities.

What do these countries have in common, beyond tobacco legislation? They treated their citizens as participants in their own governance, not as subjects of decisions made behind closed doors. They understood that a law adopted without evidence and without consultation is not a stronger law — it is a weaker one, more vulnerable to legal challenge, more likely to produce unintended consequences, and less likely to achieve its stated objectives.

Mozambique deserves the same standard. Our farmers, our workers, our traders, and our communities deserve the same standard.

The Study That Was Never Done — And Why It Matters

A Socio-Economic Impact Assessment is not a bureaucratic formality. It is a tool for governing responsibly. It asks: if we implement this policy as written, what will happen? Not what do we intend — what will actually happen, to real people, measured in real numbers?

In the case of Mozambique's Tobacco Control Bill, no such assessment was conducted. A bill that proposes to ban the sale of tobacco products in convenience stores, prohibit the sale of cigarettes per stick, eliminate all sector CSR activities, and impose new restrictions on an industry that directly and indirectly employs close to a million people — this bill was sent to Parliament without a single page of economic modelling.

What would a proper impact assessment have examined? It would have looked at what happens to the one hundred thousand farmers when their market shrinks. It would have modelled the revenue implications for the government when three large manufacturers face a hostile operating environment and begin to reconsider their presence. It would have asked what happens to the informal traders when the per-stick ban takes effect — whether they find alternative products, or whether they simply lose income that their families depend on. It would have studied the relationship between punitive formal sector regulation and the growth of the illicit cigarette market, which in neighbouring South Africa already accounts for between sixty and seventy percent of all cigarettes consumed, representing a catastrophic loss of tax revenue.

It would have looked at the forty schools and four hundred feeding programmes and asked: what is the replacement plan? It would have asked the communities in Manica and Tete and Niassa: if the corporate investment in your social infrastructure disappears, what fills the gap?

A law that could eliminate hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity, affect a million livelihoods, and remove the only school or feeding programme in a community — that law required an impact assessment. It did not receive one.

These questions have answers. The answers may or may not change the final shape of the legislation. But a Parliament that passes a law without even asking the questions is a Parliament that has not done its job.

A Question Of Sovereignty: Who Is Writing Mozambique'S Laws?

There is a question that has not been asked loudly enough in this debate, and we believe Parliament should ask it: who is driving the urgency behind this Bill?

It is well established, and publicly documented at the international level, that the push to accelerate tobacco control legislation in lower-income countries is actively supported and funded by a network of international organisations, foreign-funded NGOs, and multilateral health agencies. Some of these organisations do important and legitimate work. But their interests are not always identical to the interests of Mozambican farmers, Mozambican workers, and Mozambican communities. And when their influence shapes a legislative process in ways that bypass the constitutional obligations of consultation, something has gone wrong.

Mozambique is a sovereign nation. Its Parliament exists to represent the Mozambican people — all of them, including the hundred thousand farmers who grow tobacco and the nine hundred thousand people whose livelihoods depend on the value chain. When foreign organisations — whether they are international health bodies, foreign-government-funded advocacy groups, or multilateral institutions with their own agendas — exert pressure on Mozambique's legislative process in ways that suppress the voices of Mozambican citizens, that is an interference in Mozambique's national sovereignty that Parliament should examine, not facilitate.

The question Parliament must answer is not only what this Bill says — but who wrote it, who funded the process that produced it, and whose interests it truly serves.

We are not asking Parliament to ignore public health. We are asking Parliament to do something more difficult and more important: to govern for the whole of Mozambique, with eyes open to the full range of consequences, and with the democratic legitimacy that comes only from having genuinely consulted the people affected.

It is worth asking, specifically and directly: which international organisations were involved in drafting or promoting the text of this Bill? Were foreign-funded organisations given a seat at the table that was denied to Mozambican farmers and workers? Were technical and financial resources provided by foreign entities to support a process that excluded domestic stakeholders? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, Parliament owes the Mozambican people an explanation.

Other countries have grappled with this dynamic. In Uganda, in Zimbabwe, in Indonesia, researchers and journalists have documented cases where internationally funded tobacco control advocacy organisations operated in ways that subordinated local economic realities to global agenda-setting. Mozambique is not immune to this pattern. Our Parliament is capable of engaging constructively with the public health dimensions of tobacco regulation without becoming a vehicle for foreign interests that have no accountability to Mozambican voters.

Three Provisions That Demand Reconsideration

Without prejudging the overall merits of tobacco regulation, three specific provisions of the Bill require serious parliamentary scrutiny before any vote is taken.

The ban on per-stick cigarette sales. In Mozambique, as in most of Sub-Saharan Africa, a significant share of cigarette consumption occurs through single-stick purchases. This is not a failure of regulation — it is a reflection of economic reality. Many consumers cannot afford a full pack. The informal traders who serve them — predominantly women, predominantly operating in peri-urban and rural markets — depend on this format for a meaningful part of their daily income. Eliminating it does not eliminate cigarette consumption. It eliminates the livelihoods of those who sell them legally and pushes the trade toward unregistered, untaxed channels. No country that has tried this measure has produced evidence that it reduces smoking rates. It does produce evidence that it destroys informal trade.

The ban on tobacco sales in convenience stores and duty-free outlets. This provision is, to our knowledge, without precedent in any comparable regulatory framework in Africa or elsewhere. Tobacco products, where their sale is legal, are sold in licensed, registered, tax-paying retail environments. Removing them from those environments does not make them less available — it makes their distribution less traceable, less regulated, and less taxed. The primary beneficiary of this provision, if enacted, would be the illicit cigarette market.

The prohibition on sector CSR activities. Corporate social responsibility programmes in tobacco-growing communities represent, in the Mozambican context, a form of social investment that fills gaps the state has not been able to fill. The schools, the feeding programmes, the boreholes — these are not public relations exercises. They are functioning infrastructure. A blanket prohibition, with no transition period, no replacement mechanism, and no plan for the communities affected, is not sound policy. It is a punitive measure that punishes the wrong people.

What Is Being Asked From Parliament

The request is straightforward, and is consistent with the constitutional values of this republic.

Parliament should pause the plenary vote on the Tobacco Control Bill and open a proper, inclusive consultation process. Not a process managed by international organisations with foreign funding and their own priorities. A Mozambican process, run by Mozambican institutions, in the provinces where the tobacco sector actually operates, with the farmers, workers, traders, and communities who have the most to lose.

Parliament should commission an independent Socio-Economic Impact Assessment before any final vote. This study should be conducted by Mozambican economists and researchers, published openly, and subject to public response. It should model the impact of the Bill's key provisions on employment, on government revenue, on the informal economy, on social infrastructure, and on the likely growth of the illicit market.

Parliament needs to scrutinise the process by which this Bill was developed. Who contributed to its drafting? Which organisations — domestic and foreign — had access to the process that was denied to Mozambican stakeholders? What financial resources supported the development of the Bill, and from where did those resources come? These are not hostile questions. They are the questions a responsible legislature asks about any major piece of legislation.

Parliament has to recognise that good tobacco regulation is possible — and that good tobacco regulation requires exactly the kind of process we are describing. South Africa is doing it. Kenya did it. Nigeria did it. These countries did not abandon their public health commitments by taking the time to consult their citizens and study the consequences of their proposed laws. They honoured those commitments more fully by doing so.

Parliament is not being asked to abandon this bill. It is being asked to earn it — through a process worthy of the people it represents.

Closing

The tobacco sector in Mozambique is not a foreign corporation asking for protection. It is farmers in Tete rising before dawn. It is women in Niassa managing cooperatives. It is workers in Maputo counting on a salary. It is children in Manica eating lunch because a feeding programme is funded. It is market traders in Nampula calculating whether today's sales will cover tonight's dinner.

These people exist. They are Mozambican citizens. They have not been heard. They are asking — calmly, clearly, and with the full weight of their numbers — to be heard before it is too late.

Parliament was elected to serve them. Now is the moment to do so.

About This Article

This opinion piece has been compiled to represent the collective perspectives of stakeholders across Mozambique's tobacco value chain who were not invited to participate in the parliamentary consultation process for the Tobacco Control Bill. It gives voice to the positions of tobacco farmers from the producing provinces, informal traders, manufacturing sector workers, agricultural cooperative members, transport contractors, rural community representatives, and school administrators in tobacco-growing areas. It is published in the public interest and in the interest of democratic governance.

References: Global Tobacco Industry Interference Index 2025 (STOP / GGTC); WHO FCTC implementation reports — South Africa, Kenya, Zambia, Nigeria; South African Parliamentary Committee hearings on the Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Bill (2018–ongoing); Kenya Tobacco Control Act (2007) and consultation records; Mozambique National Statistics Bureau tobacco sector data; PMC academic review — 'Tobacco policy incoherence in Mozambique' (Health Policy and Planning, Oxford Academic, 2024).

Mozambique: They Were Not Asked. Now They Are Asking Parliament To Stop

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