Sustainable Small Scale Agriculture Transformation Process in Ribáuè District, Nampula Province, Mozambique

Abstract: Over 80 percent of the population in Africa are smallholder peasant farmers, still predominantly engaged in subsistence farming, distinctive with low yields. The Low African agriculture productivity, according to the World Bank Report (2008) is mainly attributed to African governments as obstruction to development owing to inappropriate government policy interventions, poor governance coupled with the state’s withdrawing from investments in market infrastructure, and support services. At the same time another report by the Nordic African Institute (2007) claims that low productivity is due to policies imposed by the IMF and World Bank, especially the policy concerning denial of the state having a significant role in the process of development. Hence, two opinions from two prestigious institutions are displaying contradictory versions of the reasons behind the apparent crisis of agriculture in Africa. The purpose of this study is to try to understand the relevance and possible compatibility of the WDR (2008) and NAI Report (2007) strategic outlooks to the reality in an African rural setting in Ribaue district, in northern Mozambique regarding the transformation process of smallholder peasant agriculture. A qualitative study was carried out using semi structured interviews with both primary and secondary stakeholders in the district of Ribáuè. The findings revealed a very slow agriculture transformation process in terms of areas of fields cultivated, technology/inputs, volume of production and productivity. An important implication of these findings is that poverty as the focal problem for this low transformation process has not been adequately addressed. As a consequence, peasant farmers have limited access to all the five capital assets in the Sustainable Rural Livelihood model that are essential for the transformation of small scale peasant agriculture. There are underlying factors such as low public spending mainly attributed to the State’s deficiency in the balance of payments, consequently leading to the high dependency on foreign aid, where the conditions compromises the sovereignty of the country, in terms of its ability to plan its own budget, and choice of development projects that meet the needs of small scale peasant farmers. Our proposals are not very different from NAI’s in terms of emphasis on achieving long term productive potential through government enhancement in investment in building institutional capacity (in form of human resource development and physical resources), and by coming up with coherent development strategies for small scale peasant farmers to promote agricultural productivity. The government needs to adopt pro-poor policy reviews and develop frameworks for sustainable agriculture. This can be achieved through investment in R&D especially in the field of normative policy analysis, which aims at identifying ‘smart’ policy instruments that fit into the country-specific frame conditions.