WHAT WE HAVE ACHIEVED

MICAIA’s work in focus: Mpunga community
MICAIA’s approach is long-term. We know that it takes time to strengthen and diversify local economies and to help people build skills, knowledge and confidence. We’re only in our second year but in a few areas we have concentrated our efforts and we can already show some impact. One of these areas is the Mpunga community of Moribane, Manica Province. Read on…

Boosting food security
The biggest challenge facing much of Africa, and Mozambique is no different, is to enable all people to have enough good food to eat. Achieving food security in Mozambique is some way off. This is in part because climate change is making farming increasingly difficult, and in part because switches in land use to biofuels and export agriculture are not being balanced by significant boost to smallholder food production or improving distribution of food around the country. In an area some 30km outside of Chimoio, MICAIA Foundation is working with smallholder farmers both to improve household food security and to help achieve better market access for surplus crops. We are now helping more than 600 families grow and sell more food. Read on

Creating local economic opportunity
Manica Province is an important agricultural region with great potential for producing much higher volumes of food for local and national markets. Currently, much of the investment interest is in setting up large scale export-oriented farms or getting farmers to grow crops for export on a contract basis. MICAIA’s priority is to create opportunities for smallholders and other producers to get involved in more empowering economic opportunities, especially local businesses in which they as producers can have a stake. We’re already doing this in tourism (see MICAIA’s work in focus: Mpunga) but we’re also helping organize farmers to establish cooperatives and invest in local market-oriented specialist production. Read on

Helping communities secure their land
We live now in an era in which large scale tracts of land in Africa are being acquired by investors and foreign governments in order to produce food and fuel for the needs of their own populations now and in future. To some people such investments are a ‘win-win’, creating profit and securing resources for the investor, but creating new markets for local people. To many others, including local citizen organizations, these land acquisitions are little more than ‘land-grabbing’ in which local people and communities are sidelined and their traditional land management systems destroyed. This is a huge issue, and the reality is probably somewhere between these two extremes; but the bottom line is this: unless communities secure their traditional land holdings, they are too easily ignored. MICAIA is working with several communities to secure their land and plan its balanced management. Read on…

Encouraging active citizenship
One of MICAIA’s core long-term programmes is Active Citizens – Learning for Life. This programme focuses on helping people access opportunities for informal as well as formal learning and education, and on enabling people to participate actively and knowledgeably as citizens in civic and civil life. In 2008 and 2009, MICAIA Foundation piloted a facilitated community learning programme using locally recruited Community Facilitators. The programme showed the enthusiasm in communities for learning about the wide array of issues that affect daily life. Read on

Another important feature of active citizenship is being able to participate knowledgably and powerfully in civic and civil life. The Government of Mozambique is eager to encourage citizen participation in planning local development, and a system of decentralized planning and budgeting is in place. Unfortunately, at community level few people really understand the system or their right to participate. Even if they do join in meetings they do not know how to monitor approved local development projects or to hold investors and local government to account. In 2009 MICAIA developed a new approach to training community members in the key features of the decentralized planning system. The approach was successful at local level and received national attention by Government. Read on