Joaquim Chissano’s Vision for Agriculture and Agroindustry in Mozambique

Joaquim Alberto Chissano, former President of the Republic of Mozambique, shares his vision for the development of agriculture and agroindustry in the country.

“My vision is that we need to provide more training to people, in order to be able to make use of more sustainable ways of doing agriculture. Also, the Government, and all those who can work with it, whether technically or financially, should create the infrastructure and bring in the necessary equipment, so that there’s less of a need to develop new areas for agriculture, but improve existing areas instead. In other words, being able to produce more crops in a small space – either cash crops or food crops. This can be achieved through training, or with the necessary equipment and technology”, says Joaquim Chissano.

“Training comes first, not just in terms of how you till the land (i.e. zero tilling, organic fertilisers, etc.), but also in terms of management, which allows people to become richer from what they do and then enables them to go from subsistence farming to commercial farming, while also introducing the processing element, as the only way one can increase one’s revenue in agriculture. It’s vital to add value to your products, through processing, together with creating a good market. The goal, therefore, is to improve the capacity of both small and medium-scale farmers to achieve it, thus becoming a cornerstone for development, as per the wishes of the Government’s programme: reclaiming agriculture and turning it into a foundation for development. All of these things must come together”, he adds.

“It’s not easy to train engineers in agronomy and then have them come out and wait to be employed by the State. This is not enough. The State should certainly employ a few of them, in order to train those who are on the field, i.e. both small and medium-scale farmers, or even some large-scale farmers who may not be doing things correctly. I’m not mentioning bigger farmers, because I’m assuming that when they become big, they know what to do, in order to attain higher revenue or profit”, he concludes.