Capacity building for emergency management- Main menu

Mozambique is very vulnerable to natural disasters, especially droughts and floods. The early 90's were characterized by droughts, while 2000 and 2001 saw excessive floods; first in the south and the following year, in the centre of the country. Since 2001, the southern and central provinces have been badly hit by drought. International assistance to alleviate the impact of the recent floods and droughts has helped MINAG and some of its institutions to develop capacity for early warning and disaster relief. This capacity must be consolidated with an emphasis on developing local capacity and introducing new methods to integrate emergency and rehabilitation efforts into the various sector development programmes.

There has been considerable progress in increasing the 'state of readiness' for emergencies, including contingency planning, emergency interventions and rehabilitation. A weak point, however, lies in identifying the affected population and determining who is eligible for assistance. This problem is closely linked to the capacity of local government and the non-governmental organizations to collect and analyze food security data, identify relief needs and deal with relief interventions.

In addition, there has been a rather heavy reliance on traditional emergency response mechanisms, i.e. distribution of food aid, seed, agricultural tools, food-for-work projects, etc., without experimenting with new mechanisms that may respond better to the actual needs of the people and be more integrated into their normal coping strategies. In this respect it is noteworthy to observe how the introduction of seed and input fairs has taken off during the last years, providing a far more flexible and partly market development-oriented approach to the more traditional distribution of fixed seed and tool kits. In addition, more and more relief interventions are no longer directly undertaken by government institutions, but are increasingly outsourced to NGOs and other intermediaries, in the process enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of the relief operations.

Various line ministries and institutions are directly involved in disaster management. For FAO, the most important are the National Institute for Disaster Management, MINAG, the Ministry of Fisheries, the National Institute of Meteorology (INAM) and the National Secretariat of Cartography (CENACARTA).

Current support interventions

• Improvement of access of smallholder farmers to agricultural inputs through Input Trade Fairs

• Support to the Security Information System Activities of SETSAN

• Support to the Ministry of Agriculture in the development of a drought mitigation action plan

Potential support interventions

• Provision of technical assistance for improving food aid and agricultural emergency programmes and their potential linkages with new ways of enhancing private sector distribution mechanisms, e.g. through food and input fairs;

• Provision of support for the design and implementation of contingency planning exercises, with particular reference to the institutional and operational strengthening of the Unit for Coordination of Emergency in Agriculture, both at central and decentralized levels.

Click here to go to FAO Field Programme Management Information System (FPMIS) Projects lists for Mozambique