Mozambique

Despite a gross domestic product growth of over 2.2% in 2021, Mozambique’s population, of almost 31.6 million, remains one of the most vulnerable in the world, ranking 185 out of 191 countries in the 2021/2022 Human Development Index of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). 

According to the Cost of Hunger (2017), the country loses close to 10% of its annual GDP ($1.6 billion) due to chronic malnutrition. According to the GNR 2015, in Mozambique, 69% of children 6-24 months of age suffer from vitamin A deficiency and 44% of women of reproductive age are anaemic. Such micronutrient deficiencies, also known as "hidden hunger", lead to high social and public costs, reduced work capacity, and tragic loss of human potential. 

Although, according to the outcome of the 2022 Post Harvest Food Safety Assessment, acute food insecurity decreased from 13% to 10% of the population in Mozambique, the same report states that only 38% of the population can satisfy their food needs but must resort to survival strategies to meet their non-food needs. 

Young girl wearing a pink dress and smiling to the camera while holding a basket of bananas

Food production is one of the largest victims of climate change and environmental degradation - in the last 3 years Mozambique was impacted by at least 2 cyclones per year that have severely impacted the food production sector. © GAIN / Frederick Dharshie

One of the main reasons leading to the above is related to how the Mozambican Food System works.  

Closing the food systems gaps is paramount to improving nutrition. Yet, food systems and supply chains are facing a triple threat due to COVID-19, conflict in Ukraine, and climate change, which have significantly worsened the levels of malnutrition and hunger, thus our food systems need to change if we are to reverse these trends. 

Mozambique faces a triple burden of malnutrition 

  • Poor diets (76.4% of the population did not have a healthy meal in the 12 months prior to the survey) are the number one driver of ill-health and early mortality around the country and undermine the life chances of all. 
  • Food production is one of the largest victims of climate change and environmental degradation (in the last 3 years Mozambique was impacted by at least 2 cyclones per year that have severely impacted the food production sector).  
  • COVID-19 pandemic and political and social instability increased inequalities and worsened the scale of the nutritional challenges, particularly for women and children (according to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis, nearly 1.9 million people are experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 3 or above) in Mozambique, including almost 40,000 people in an emergency (IPC Phase 4). About 71% (1.3 million people) of these people are in four provinces: Cabo Delgado, Niassa, Nampula, and Zambezia.

GAIN’s contribution

The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) is a Swiss-based foundation launched at the United Nations in 2002 to tackle the human suffering caused by malnutrition. Due to COVID19, conflict in Ukraine, and climate change, malnutrition and hunger have worsened significantly since 2019, reversing a decade of progress.

There is growing recognition that our food systems need to change if we are to reverse these trends. Mozambique is one of the countries impacted by malnutrition. GAIN’s Strategy aims to transform food systems to make healthier diets from sustainable food systems accessible to all people and especially those who are most vulnerable to shocks.

By 2027, we aim to improve the access of 1.5 billion people to nutritionally enhanced staple foods, improve the access of 25 million people to healthier diets, and support positive food system change in 10 countries. This is bold and complex, and the only way to achieve this is to work together with partners including governments, businesses, and civil society at the country and global level. These goals, and the ways of achieving them, build on our twenty-year legacy of transforming people’s lives with improved nutrition through concerted action and effective policy change.

People fishing in Mozambique

We design and implement programmes that seek to empower the most vulnerable, working with organisations that help us achieve our goal of improving food systems. © GAIN / Frederick Dharshie

In Mozambique, we have been implementing projects since 2011 and have had our local representation (including offices) since 2013 in the provinces of Sofala, Nampula, Cabo Delgado, and Maputo city. We work closely with the government, private sector, and other partners to support the uptake of healthy diets sourced from sustainable food systems.

In Mozambique, we are focusing on the provinces facing the highest burdens of malnutrition (Nampula, Cabo Delgado, Sofala, Zambezia, and Manica). We design and implement programmes that seek to empower the most vulnerable, working with organisations that help us achieve our goal of improving food systems aligned with and complimentary to the Government Quinquennial Programme, the Multisectoral Action Plan for the Reduction of Chronic Undernutrition 2011-2020, and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Nourishing Food Pathways Mozambique

This is a global program established with the overall objective of supporting the implementation of national food system pathways resulting from the countries’ commitments in the UN-Food Systems Summit 2021 (UNFSS). The pathways seek to accelerate overall improvements in the consumption of safe nutritious food for all,especially for the most vulnerable people, and ensure food production in environmentally sustainable ways.  

Amongst 10 countries, the program is implemented in Mozambique through 4 specific Programme Workstreams/interventions:   

Workstream 1.1 – Support the development & implementation of Mozambique Food System Pathways – Support and promote an improved integrated planning, implementation, alignment, and management of national food systems. 

Workstream 2.2 – Include voices of local Government and markets – Support local governance and, including multiple stakeholders in country UNFSS pathway development. 

Workstream 5.1 – Align food, nutrition & the environment – promote better Nutrition and Environment with regards to animal-sourced foods production and, motivating consumers to make healthier and sustainable choices as well as minimising the associated environmental impacts. 

Workstream 6.2 – Strengthen the accountability, understanding, and learning of food systems – Support the development and implementation of country Food Systems dashboards. 

Okhokelamo Ni Solha

Okhokelamo Ni Solha (Resilient Nutrition) will achieve at least a 10% reduction in the prevalence of chronic malnutrition among children under 5 years of age and break the intergenerational cycle of malnutrition in Mozambique, Zambezia Province. GAIN’s intervention will be implemented as part of a consortium led by Save the Children alongside other partners such as Associação Nacional de Extensão Rural (AENA), Rede Homens pela Mudança (HOPEM), Kukumbi, and PCI Media.  

Okhokelamo Ni Solha will work through community-level implementation platforms to reach 1,157,575 participants within six districts in Zambezia (Alto Mólocuè, Derre, Ile, Mocuba, Morrumbala, and Mulevala) to sustainably improve women’s nutrition including in the face of shocks; improve infant and young child feeding; reduce early pregnancy and improve nutrition among adolescent girls.

CAtalyzing Strengthened policy aCtion for heAlthy Diets and ResiliencE (CASCADE)

This initiative will be implemented in a consortium between CARE International and GAIN, with the goal of (i) improving food security and (ii) contributing to the reduction of malnutrition of women of reproductive age and children in Benin, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Mozambique. 

CASCADE will achieve these goals through the following two strategic objectives:

  • Strategic objective 1: To increase access to and consumption of healthy diets among household members in the six programme countries, particularly women of reproductive age and children. 
  • Strategic objective 2: To increase resilience to price and climate change-related shocks and stresses of household members in the six programme countries, particularly women of reproductive age and children. 

The project will be implemented in the districts of Érati, Nacarroa, and Nampula city.  

In Mozambique, CASCADE’s interventions assert that the following intermediate outcomes need to take place to achieve the consortium’s strategic objectives and overall programme goals: 

  • Government actors involved in fortification provide stronger implementation, monitoring, and enforcement of fortification policies. 
  • Target households have increased access to fortified foods. 
  • Private service providers offer accessible and affordable products and services enabling year-round consumption of healthy diets, particularly for women of reproductive age and children. 
  • Synergies between relevant stakeholders allow for better coordination and improved policy coherence.

Nutrition Impact at Scale (NIS)

Through the NIS programme, GAIN seeks to scale the impact of its work to increase access to safe and nutritious foods, especially for low-income consumers. By working with other Enterprise Support Organisations (ESOs) that are willing and are already working with a large portfolio of SMEs to attach a 'nutrition lens' to their work with SMEs, NIS will enable a large-scale and accelerated nutrition impact for the masses, increasing the focus on nutrition-related businesses.

This programme offers SMEs technical assistance, business-to-business mentorship, qualifications and certification, business model research, tools, and alliances/community of practice to better support and/or incubate SMEs to improve nutrition impact. 

Interventions 

  • Strengthen the capacity of other actors (accelerators and incubators) to support SMEs by collecting best practices in supporting SMEs to increase the availability of nutritious food by the scale and provide training and practical tools for other actors. GAIN will use its suite of standard training materials and tools for other actors to use as part of their SME support programs.  
  • Identify policies that restrict the ability of SMEs to have a positive impact on nutrition and advocate for the improvement of these policies.  
  • Develop and disseminate learnings around business models that can offer profit to companies while improving access to nutritious food among low-income consumers. 

Improving Consumption of Animal Source Foods (ASF)

The project aims to improve diet quality by increasing the consumption of animal source foods (ASF) of 1.1 million Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) consumers in Beira and Nacala corridors, by supporting the desirability, affordability, and accessibility of these foods. To achieve our goal, GAIN will focus on three food groups (fish, poultry, and eggs) by targeting our interventions in three cross-cutting main pillars: 

  • Desirability: demand generation messages will leverage the desire for variety among those for whom dried fish is their only regularly consumed ASF, suggesting new preparations and substitution with other low-cost options that are less frequently consumed, such as eggs and cheap chicken cuts. The communication channels will include radio, TV, social media, in-store promotion, roadshows, and community interactions, e.g., cooking demonstrations. 
  • Accessibility and affordability: we focus on the most affordable ASF options and invest in developing an enhanced private-sector-led last-mile distribution system (from aggregation/consolidation points to last-mile retailers), as well as support distribution networks by investing in processing (fish drying technology) and cold chain (from aggregation points/distribution centres all the way through to retail). 
  • Enabling environment: we will also focus on policy enabling the environment as a powerful means to sustain the impact of our intervention in the food environment targeting policies in three priority areas around ASF: food safety and quality, fiscal measures and incentives, and environmental sustainable policy. 

The project will be implemented in 30 districts of Beira and Nacala trading corridors. 

Scaling up Nutrition Business Networking

The network was established with the mandate of improving and strengthening the Private Sector’s contribution to improving nutrition. In that context, the network is co-facilitated by GAIN and WFP and, operationally, coordinated by a Secretariat.  

The network aims to, on one hand, create and stimulate synergies amongst their associates to improve the business environment through initiatives that improve and amplify their productivity abilities or the creation of new market opportunities. On the other hand, the network is established as an advocacy mechanism on behalf of the private sector in relation to the different factors that pre-empt businesses (legal, regulatory, among others).  

Interventions  

  • Development of the SBNMOZ’s strategic plan 3.0 (2022-2027)  
  • 280 businesses trained and linked to investors (banks, equity, angels, grants, etc.)  
  • 200 national businesses assuming nutrition improvement-related commitments under SBNMOZ membership  
  • Implementation of 4 SBNMOZ high-level annual conferences 

The Food Systems Dashboard

This is a platform developed by GAIN, in partnership with entities from the Government (MADER, MISAU, MIC, MTA), Academy (Universidade Eduardo Mondlane), and civil society (Scaling Up Nutrition Civil Society Network).  

The platform will operate from the national to the provincial and municipal levels, providing resources and data on food systems from multiple sources. The objective of the Dashboard is to provide users with a comprehensive overview of food systems and better inform them about priorities and ways to sustainably improve the diets and nutrition of Mozambicans.  

In the first phase, the intervention will be implemented in three cities, namely: Beira, Quelimane, and Pemba. 

Strengthening Food Systems in Cabo Delgado

This project aims primarily to strengthen and repair the local food system in the southern segment of Cabo Delgado, which has been severely impacted by conflict, drought, and long-standing under-investment, and Nampula province where many internally displaced people (IDPs) from Cabo Delgado have been hosted. Ultimately, the project seeks to secure the food consumption of the poorest residents of four vulnerable districts in Cabo Delgado and three districts in Nampula province, including IDPs from conflict areas and their host households, with actions aimed at improving both the availability and affordability of safe and nutritious foods in their communities.  

This 3-year project will be implemented in the following districts of Cabo Delgado: Metuge, Mecufi, Pemba, and Chiúre, and in Nampula: Meconta, Nacala Porto, and Nampula district, where interventions in the following main areas will be developed:  

  • Construction of new fresh food markets within the Pemba and Namialo municipal areas. 
  • Capacity building and development for small and medium enterprises and IDP cooperatives. 
  • Strengthening local governance functions to improve local food systems. 

Transform Nutrition (TN)

This is an initiative that GAIN is implementing as part of an ADPP-led consortium, with funding from USAID. Through this initiative, a holistic, gender transformative model will be developed, tested, and will be delivered to the Government of Mozambique to achieve improved nutrition outcomes for pregnant and lactating women, adolescent girls, and children under 2 years of age.  

In this project, GAIN is responsible for the expansion to 12 districts in Nampula of the emo demos (emotional demonstrations) and Jogo das Heroínas (Heroines’ games) initiatives, two interventions that have been tested in previous projects by GAIN. 

Interventions 

  • Scaling up of the "Jogo das Heroínas" to 12 districts in Nampula province 
  • Scaling up of the "emo demos" to 6 districts in Nampula province 
  • Collaboration, learning and adaptation 
  • Implementation of research on 3 topics:  
  • IR1: Examining the initial Implementation of the "emo demos" Behaviour Change Technique. 
  • IR2: Examining the implementation of the "Adjusted Trials of Improved Practices" Behaviour Change Technique 
  • IR3: Examining the Implementation of the Community Groups Videos” Behaviour Change Technique