Mozambique

Despite these impressive achievements, significant challenges to food and nutrition security remain. The vast majority – 80 percent – of the population cannot afford the minimum costs for an adequate diet, and the situation is made worse by inflation and a rise in food prices, which in October 2016 recorded a five-year high.

Coupled with other factors – such as high rates of infectious diseases like malaria and poor access to health services, water and sanitation – poorly diversified diets lie at the roots of persistently high malnutrition, which affects almost half of children under 5. Stunting, or low height for age, affects 42.3 percent of children in the same age group, with higher prevalence in rural areas.

Like malnutrition, food insecurity also varies considerably across regions as shocks affect different locations to different degrees.

Mozambique is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world. It is highly vulnerable to extreme climatic conditions which destroy infrastructure and restrict economic growth, hindering efforts to achieve environmental sustainability and to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. Although the southern and central regions are prone to drought, floods frequently occur along major river basins and in poorly-drained urban settlements. Two out of three people live in coastal areas and are vulnerable to rapid-onset disasters such as cyclones, storms and flash floods.

As a result of the current severe drought caused by El Niño – which caused harvests to be poor of fail altogether in 2016 – some 2 million people in the central and southern parts of the country are acutely food insecure, and this number is expected to increase further.

Mozambique hosts over 14,800 asylum-seekers, the majority of whom originate from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Rwanda and Somalia. Maratane camp, the country's only refugee camp, in the Northern Province of Nampula, registers 200 new arrivals each month.  

Following the political-military conflict in central and northern Mozambique, 8,000 - 10,000 Mozambican asylum seekers fled into Malawi and another 3,300 into south-eastern Zimbabwe. Many have been displaced internally.

WFP has been supporting the Government of Mozambique since 1977 in its efforts to reduce hunger and improve food security and nutrition. WFP’s work focuses on building the food security and resilience of individuals and communities, in the face of multiple shocks and stressors.