The Mozambican government has expressed the hope of approving the master plan of Prosavana, a large agricultural project to be implemented in the country’s three northern provinces by the end of 2015, APA can report on Wednesday.
Prosavana, which is based on three-sided cooperation between the governments of Mozambique, Brazil and Japan, is intended to reproduce the success of using the so-called Brazilian for agricultural production in Mozambique’s savannah.
The project’s coordinator, Limbau says that the master plan for Prosavana, to be conducted in partnership with the governments of Brazil and Japan, has already been through the stages of public consultation at district and provincial levels and now requires consultations on a national level, to be held in Maputo.
The biggest steps have been taken, and after the approval of the master plan later this year, we expect to see Prosavana launched in 2016, Limbau told reporters in Maputo.
This project has led to fears that the communities in the programme would lose their land and prompted protests from inhabitants of the Nacala corridor and by several non-governmental organisations, who questioned the results of a similar experience in Brazil.
According to the programme’s coordinator, the main concerns raised by farmers during the public consultation meetings were related to the fear of land loss, despite government assurances that this would not happen in Mozambique and that joining the programme is not compulsory.
Prosavana is intended to improve the living conditions of the Nacala corridor’s population, in the northern Nampula province, modernise agriculture, increase productivity and create new models of agricultural development, currently based on family subsistence production, and to guide them to access markets.
Source: starafrica
