Participants at the workshop held in Maputo

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations supports the Government of Mozambique, through the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (MASA), in the development of agricultural research, contributing to the development of the sector through the project "Monitoring and Analysis of Agricultural and Food Policies (MAFAP) ".

Through MAFAP, FAO has assisted MASA in formulating appropriate agricultural reforms through research such as the study of incentives and disincentives for agricultural products and the analysis of public expenditure in the agricultural sector.

For the specific case of Mozambique, the MAFAP programme has developed studies on some products, namely: maize, chicken, cassava, rice, cotton and developed analyzes that measure price incentives and analyze levels.

FAO Mozambique recently held a seminar to share the results gained during the implementation of this project in the country. Attended to the event MASA technicians, as well as the Center for Agricultural Policy Studies (CEPAG) of the Faculty of Agronomy and Forestry Engineering of Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM), partners of cooperation and other institutions linked to the agricultural sector.

During the seminar, FAO Representative Olman Serrano remarked that the MAFAP programme has been producing analyzes of public agricultural and food expenditure, analyzes of price incentives, as well as timely analyzes at the Government's request to support decision-making.

"MAFAP provided support to the Cotton Institute of Mozambique for the analysis of the cotton pricing mechanism and is currently supporting the Mozambican Agricultural Research Institute to revitalize the sisal value chain. In the near future, the programme will also work in the area of post-harvest losses, with extreme importance in Mozambique, "he said.

In addition to Mozambique, MAFAP is being implemented in other African countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Government of the Netherlands, the German Government and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

The main expected results of the program are the establishment of an agricultural policy monitoring system as well as support for decision-making on agri-food policies.