Reducing poverty by creating jobs through improved agricultural value chains

Private Sector-Led Rural Growth in Northern Mozambique

Country: Mozambique
Contract Period: June 2010 - December 2013
Client: Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)

Download the Project Brochure (PDF 43kb)

This project will reduce poverty in northern Mozambique by promoting private sector development, specifically by increasing the economic involvement of the poor in select agricultural value chains. It is the intention to base the project on the principles of “making markets work for the poor” (M4P).

Through targeted interventions to improve economic opportunities for the poor and expand access to markets that enable the poor to seize these opportunities, the project will provide the foundation for a sound, sustainable, long-term growth path that will lift many people out of poverty.

A six-month pilot phase will develop a workplan for the three-year implementation phase. ECIAfrica will quickly appraise current activities in selected value chains to identify key stakeholders and the lead firms carrying out critical functions in the selected subsectors. On the basis of this preliminary analysis, we will develop interventions to engage those firms. Further analysis will highlight the major opportunities in each subsector and identify possible partners for the program.

Target provinces are Nampula, Cabo Delgado and—to a lesser extent—Niassa and Zambezia, which together represent the Nacala Corridor, a series of interlinked railway lines that serve the interior of northern Mozambique, the provincial capital of Nampula, (Mozambique’s third-largest city), and the port of Nacala.
The rail lines provide access to Niassa province, the neighboring country of Malawi, and ultimately Zambia, forming a critically important transport corridor to the strategically significant deepwater port of Nacala and the minor port of Pemba.

Home to roughly 4 million people, Nampula Province is the country’s second-most populous province, while Cabo Delgado Province has 1.65 million inhabitants. The number of potential beneficiaries in the target area therefore amounts to more than 5.5 million, or more than a quarter of Mozambique’s population.