Mozambique: Academia urged to present solutions for development challenges

The Minister of Agriculture, Roberto Mito, has challenged Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM), Mozambique’s oldest higher education institution, to produce scientific guidance that will enable the construction of a resilient economy capable of bringing solutions to the country’s development challenges.

Speaking on Thursday at the “First Symposium on Climate Adaptation and Resilience in Mozambique”, held in Maputo, the minister said that the challenge is for the entire Mozambican academic community and if “measures are implemented, they would help the nation reduce its reliance on external funding.”

“Science should play a central role in identifying alternatives for national development, helping the country to leverage its existing resources and transform them into a means of financing its own priorities. Mozambique needs to rethink how it mobilizes resources for development and external funding should not come at the expense of the nation’s own capacity to find answers to its challenges.We must find local solutions to address local problems”, he said.

He advocated for leveraging national resources, converting them into financial capital, and investing that capital into the country’s development. To illustrate the scale of the problem, the minister pointed to the burden of food imports in comparison to the investments allocated to supporting domestic production.

“We imported one billion dollars’ worth of food”, he stated, referring explicitly to expenditures on foreign-sourced rice, cooking oil, wheat, and other food products.

According to the minister, support programs for production, which directly impact smallholder farmers, who make up the majority of the national workforce, receive less than 50 million dollars in annual investment.

“If you have a billion-dollar problem to solve, an investment of 50 million a year will not provide the necessary solution,” he observed, before questioning where the resources to bridge this gap might come from.

He believes that addressing this challenge requires ideas and scientific knowledge capable of guiding economic decisions and supporting the creation of a development model tailored to the reality of Mozambique.

Source: AIM