Land-grab Resistance

On October 12, the government of Mozambique quietly announced that it would close its Agriculture Promotion Centre (CEPAGRI), the agency created in 2006 to promote large-scale foreign investment in the country’s agricultural sector. Mozambique analyst Joseph Hanlon reported in his Mozambique News Report that CEPAGRI was finished because those large-scale projects it was supposed to broker: “none of them have succeeded.” The Mozambican government may have closed its agricultural promotion center, but it remains committed to giving away good land to foreigners. Large-scale projects have been more successful in forestry and tourism, with nearly two million hectares in concluded deals. And mining concessions continue to displace or threaten thousands of Mozambicans as the mineral boom continues.

Mozambique’s visions of foreign capital modernizing its agricultural sector have indeed proven grandiose. Nowhere is this clearer than in the rich Nacala Corridor in northern Mozambique, where the ProSavana project promoted by Brazil, Japan, and Mozambique was going to transform 35 million hectares—nearly 100 million acres—into soybean plantations modeled on Brazil’s cerrado region. Brazilian agribusinessmen walked away, seeing land that was hardly “unoccupied,” resistance from the communities occupying that land.

But is land-grabbing over, in Mozambique and across Africa and the rest of the developing world? Now that crop and food prices have returned to lower levels, is the pressure off from foreign buyers looking to acquire large tracts of agricultural lands?

Not according to new data from the Land Matrix Initiative, which has been tracking such deals since the land rush took off in 2007. A large number of formerly announced deals have failed to materialize but many that remain are now under contract and coming into production.

http://landmatrix.org/en/announcements/2016/10/04/analytical-report-land-matrix/

More than 1,000 large-scale foreign land deals are now under contract for agriculture covering more than 26 million hectares of land, according to the new report, "Land Matrix Analytical Report II: International Land Deals for Agriculture.” That area represents a remarkable two percent of arable land in the world. Nearly three-quarters of the projects have now begun production on some of the land.

Africa remains the largest target for land grabs, accounting for 42 percent of global deals with 10 million hectares under contract. Mozambique now ranks 18th among all target countries in area under contract, with 500,000 hectares in 60 concluded deals. That puts the country, which in the 2012 report was a top target in Africa, well behind Ethiopia, Ghana, and South Sudan, which have the most on the continent. The United States and United Kingdom remain among the leading investors in the amount of land under contract for agriculture. China ranks ninth overall, with about one million hectares under contract, barely one-third the land acquired by U.S. investors. China remains a minor agricultural player in Africa.

The new report also dispels the myth that the land grabs are mainly by “resource poor” governments to secure food access for their domestic populations. At least 70 percent of the concluded deals are by private investors, with only 6 percent directly by governments. And food crops account for a minority of the land under cultivation. Cereal crops account for only an estimated 20 percent of the area under cultivation, while 44 percent is estimated to be in oilseeds such as palm oil and another 10 percent is in sugar. The latter two are considered prime “flex-crops” because they can be used to produce biofuels, raw materials for processed foods, or edible oils and sugar.

The new data also shows that the acquired land was not “unused,” despite investor claims to the contrary. Fully 58 percent was reported to be cropland in recent use. Only 10 percent of acquired land was considered “marginal,” and Land Matrix points out that this by no means indicates that it was not in use. “Land considered to be ‘marginal’ often serves as a grazing area and is important to rural communities and indigenous peoples,” notes the report. Land Matrix also confirmed that successful projects failed to generate many jobs, as capital-intensive farming displaced labor-intensive small-scale production. One researcher estimated a net loss in livelihoods between 28 percent (Tanzania) and 75 percent (Kenya) from large-scale foreign projects.

A 200,000-hectare project along the Lurio River in northern Mozambique is still very much in the pipeline, even if it doesn’t appear yet in the Land Matrix database. (GRAIN, the other international organization collecting land grab data, shows it as an announced project that could displace 100,000 people.) But the failures are stunning, and a testament to communities’ resistance to the foreign invaders, as well as their insistence that the government respect the country’s progressive Land Law. In the Land Matrix’s first report in 2012, Mozambique was the second most important target in the world, with nearly 8 million hectares in reported agricultural deals. Now, the Land Matrix lists only 500,000 hectares in 65 concluded agricultural deals. Of the current projects, nine, on nearly 100,000 hectares, are listed as “abandoned,” mostly biofuel projects. Data is scarcer on the area actually under production, but Land Matrix could confirm only 21,000 hectares in production. No doubt, the area is larger than that. Interestingly, the largest operational project, a Chinese rice investment in Xai Xai, has been significantly scaled back from its listed 8,800-hectare plantation because of community resistance.

But the initial alarming ProSAVANA promise was 35 million hectares. ProSAVANA appears in the Land Matrix database now as a 700,000-hectare project “intended (under negotiation),” but with no land under contract or production seven years after the plan was announced. The project is now limping through yet another consultation process with little pretense of attracting investors. Brazil does not appear as the home source of investment for a single Mozambican farming project, though there certainly are a few. Interestingly, Brazil ranks fifth in the world as a land-grab target, with two million hectares under contract to foreigners.

Land Matrix’S 2012 report showed 83 million hectares in “intended” agricultural deals, with some 56 million in Africa. According to the new report, only 26 million hectares in deals have been concluded globally—less than one-third the threatened amount—with about 10 million in Africa, less than one-fifth the area reported in 2012. Resistance is a big part of the reason, and it will continue to determine where investors can impose their will. The difference between a land grab and a large-scale project is consultation and consent. An international campaign for Land Rights Now is focusing particular attention on women, indigenous communities, and others who do not have secure title to the land and are particularly vulnerable. Fundamentally, the responsibility lies with national governments to recognize communal and individual land rights and stop giving away land to foreign investors.

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Mozambique's Resource Curse

The “resource curse” that has ruined many resource-rich African countries is steadily creeping onto Mozambique, a country which only a couple of years ago was on the threshold of economic powerhouse, but is now teetering on the brink of a major debt crisis that is having serious repercussions on the economy. Before its current problems, Mozambique was earmarked for an economic boom following the discoveries of natural gas. The commodity is anticipated to add $39 billion to the economy over the next 20 years. The country’s natural gas endowment, coupled with its massive coal deposits, were set to transform the previously impoverished nation, and the region. Alas, Mozambique now seems headed on the path taken by fellow African countries that despite endowment with vast natural resources wallow in poverty. Among these are Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria and Sudan. According to the 2015 African Report, instead of creating prosperity, resources have too often fostered corruption, undermined inclusive economic growth, armed conflict and indebtedness.

Barely two years after the discovery of vast natural gas explorations and a decade after international creditors wrote off over US$6 billion of loans to the country as part of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, the resources-endowed Southern African country is showing alarming signs of plunging back into unserviceable debt.

A disclosure by the government of President Filipe Nyusi previously hidden, government-guaranteed loans exceeding $1 billion (R14,8 billion) to state defence and security companies has precipitated the spectacular fall from economic prominence to a debt crisis. It is believed this is only a tip of the iceberg amid indications the debt could rise to around $2,35 billion with further revelations. It has emerged loans to state or parastatal companies were secretly guaranteed in 2013 and 2014 by the previous government of Armando Guebuza, who presided over the country for a decade until Nyusi assumed the reins in 2015. The country’s public debt has reached frightening levels of $11,64 billion, of which $9,89 billion dollars is foreign debt. Mozambique’s gross domestic product is put at $17 billion.

Among the beneficiaries were Mozambique Tuna Company, which secured $850 million, apparently from Credit Suisse for the purchase of patrol boats. It is said the prices of the vessels were inflated. Proindicus, which provides maritime security in the Rovuma basin, borrowed $622 million, also from Credit Suisse and the Russian bank VTB.Mozambique Asset Management (MAM), provide maritime repair and maintenance, borrowed $535 million also from VTB.

Servicing the debt is already proving insurmountable to the current administration. Nyusi’s government is contemplating defaulting on the loans completely on the basis they were arranged, in violation of legal debt limits, by an erstwhile administration. The International Monetary Fund is also wary of the economic prospects of Mozambique. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), which has been working with Mozambique to help it repay a previously disclosed debt of US$850 million, has suspended the second installment of a US$282 million loan to the country. Some 14 donors and financial agencies aside the IMF, who used to give direct support to the Mozambican state budget have also interrupted disbursements “until further notice.”

A decrease in foreign aid has worsened a large drop in the world market price of some of Mozambique’s key exports and of foreign direct investment. The result has been a severe shortage of foreign currency, which has seen the Meticals currency, lose double its worth to the South African Rand to 4M/R. According to Peter Fabricius, Institute for Security Studies (ISS) consultant, since most food is imported from South Africa, this will increase food inflation, while the security situation is not rosy either.

“The resource curse, which has ruined so many other African countries, is visiting Mozambique with a vengeance,” said Fabricus.

A safe haven in Malawi?

Imagine fleeing from your home because you feel unprotected by the people who are required to so by law. And when you get to where you feel safer, the very same people come to persuade your keepers to let you come back with them, claiming you are running away from nothing! Well, this is the situation some 5,800 Mozambican nationals have found themselves in. Hundreds of them, including unaccompanied children, have been fleeing from Tete Province, near the Malawi border, since late last year following renewed fighting between government forces and opposition Renamo fighters.

The province is said to be one of the strongholds of Renamo, and the people say they are running away because allegedly government forces have been attacking them for supporting Renamo. They have since fled to Kapise village in Mwanza district in Southern Malawi, 300 meters from the border. About two-thirds of the refugees are women and children mostly below five years old, as well as the elderly. The refugees, whose numbers continue to steadily rise every day, are living in desperate conditions at the camp scrambling for necessities with 150 local families there.

A statement from Medicines San Frontiers (MSF) says that refugees do not have enough water and sanitation facilities, have poor housing, and are at risk of diseases. They are also in fear of getting attacked by soldiers from their country. A two month-old baby died of diarrhoea at the camp last month. And last week alone, MSF, which set up a clinic at the camp, treated over 380 malaria cases. Even worse, the Malawi government is under pressure from Mozambique not to recognize the people as refugees, according to MSF. Doctors without Borders says Mozambique sent several delegates to the camp to try and persuade the displaced people to come back, arguing that there was no conflict back home. However Mozambican media reports indicate that tensions have increased in recent weeks in Tete, Zambezia and Sofala provinces, with daily attacks and shootings. MSF, which started its intervention there in November 2015, has since appealed to the Malawi government to move the people to a more spacious camp, 50 kilometers from Kapise, and also away from the border as required by international humanitarian standards.

The alternative location, Luwani, a former refugee camp, is said to be the best option for the displaced people as it has plenty of space, a school, medical centre and a better road. Furthermore, the move, according to MSF, would also allow humanitarian actors such as the UNHCR, to plan appropriate services to meet the needs of the displaced community. At a recent press briefing in Blantyre, MSF’s head of mission to Malawi, Maury Gregoire, said they are treating about 159 people every day, with half diagnosed with malaria and the rest having respiratory infections and general body pain. He said the refugees only have 14 latrines whereas the respect of minimum humanitarian conditions requires that at least 20 people have one latrine or in worst case scenarios one latrine for 50 people. According to Gregoire, people have only two boreholes for both domestic and general use: “Each person has on average eight litres of water a day, barely enough to drink and cook and well below the minimum 15 to 20 litres are recommended as a humanitarian minimum in emergency settings.”

MSF has since warned that the strain by the refugees could cause tensions with Malawian families living in the village, especially on access to water. But Malawian authorities are not yet decided on whether to move the refugees or send them back home. Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs Beston Chisamile told The Nation newspaper on Thursday that they were still discussing the matter with Mozambican authorities. “Our friends in Mozambique want these people to go back home, so unless a decision is made between the two parties that they should remain in Malawi, then we can start thinking about moving them to a different place,” he said.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees-UNHCR representative to Malawi Monique Ekoko recently appealed to donors and other humanitarian organisations for more funding to help the refugees. Malawi has hosted refugees from Mozambique before. The Luwani Camp hosted over one million Mozambican refugees who fled from their country’s 16 year civil war between 1977 and 1992. The country is currently facing a tough economic situation of high inflation and interest rates which has left many people struggling to survive. It is estimated that about 2.8 million Malawians themselves are in need of food aid following last season’s dry spell and floods. A report by the Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee says about K23 billion (about US$18 million) is needed to feed such people up to the next harvest.

 From here

Fact of the Day

Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, José Pacheco, has said that about 24 percent of the Mozambican population still affected by food insecurity,

Mozambique: 100,000 People Likely To Be Displaced

Mozambique is mulling a plan to lease 240,000 hectares of prime farmland to investors to grow crops for export, threatening to displace more than 100,000 local residents, activists and academics said, citing a leaked document. The Lurio River Valley Development Project in the country's northeast aims to produce cotton, corn, sugar, ethanol and livestock, said Clemente Ntauazi, a researcher with advocacy group Academic Action for the Development of Rural Communities. An estimated 500,000 people will be affected by the plan, with 100,000 forced from their homes, Ntauazi said, citing a leaked presentation to would-be investors and satellite images of communities that would be impacted. 

The leaked plan is the latest in a series of major foreign-based agricultural project proposed in Mozambique and other African countries that supporters say will bring jobs and boost land productivity but critics fear will displace local people and rob small-scale farmers of their livelihoods. "The area holds some of Mozambique's best land and local farmers have been living there for more than 30 years," Ntauazi told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. 

The proposal follows another major ongoing agricultural project in Mozambique with the government planning to approve the Brazilian-and-Japanese backed ProSavana Project covering several million hectares to grow soybeans by the end of the year. 

The proposed Lurio River project, involving two hydro electric dams along with agriculture plans, is currently waiting approval from the Council of Ministers, a government body, researchers said. It's unclear when a decision will be made. "This is a secret (plan), no consultation, (and) no published information from the government," Tim Wise, director of Tufts University's Global Development Institute, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Officials at the country's agriculture ministry did not make a spokesperson available to comment on the proposed project. 

The initiative is expected to cost $4.2 billion, a sum Mozambique's cash-strapped government would not be able to finance without outside support, Ntauazi said. Mozambique is one of the world's poorest countries, ranking 178 out of 187 nations on the U.N.'s Human Development Index. 

To increase food production, the government should invest in local farmers, many of whom still use the most basic hoes to till their fields and lack access to the best seeds, Wise said. Residents living and working on the land in question had no idea they could be displaced, he said, after visiting some of the areas in Nampula province earlier this year. Under Mozambique's land laws, the government is obliged to consult local communities, even if they don't have formal ownership of the land they farm, Ntauazi said. 

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Farming In Mozambique - Whose Model?

Government of Mozambique is expected to approve Prosavana project this year The master plan of Prosavana, a large agricultural project to be implemented in three northern provinces of Mozambique, is due to be approved by the government by the end of 2015, the project’s coordinator said in Maputo. António Limbau also told Portuguese news agency Lusa that the master plan for Prosavana, to be conducted in partnership with the governments of Brazil and Japan, has already been through the stages of public consultation at district and provincial levels and now requires consultations on a national level, to be held in Maputo. This project has led to fears that the communities in the programme would lose their land and prompted protests from inhabitants of the Nacala corridor and by several non-governmental organisations, who questioned the results of a similar experience in Brazil. According to the programme’s coordinator, the main concerns raised by farmers during the public consultation meetings were related to the fear of land loss, despite government assurances that this would not happen in Mozambique and that joining the programme is not compulsory . The biggest steps “have been taken,” the programme coordinator said, who, after the approval of the master plan, expects to see Prosavana launched in 2016. Prosavana is intended to improve the living conditions of the Nacala corridor’s population, modernise agriculture, increase productivity and create new models of agricultural development, currently based on family subsistence production, and to guide them to the market.

from here

Resistance to Prosavana in Mozambique

PROSAVANA is a cooperation program between Mozambique, Brazil and Japan, which aims to create new models of sustainable agricultural development in Mozambique's savanna region, taking into consideration the conservation of the environment; searching for agrarian development; and oriented to the rural/regional competitive markets. This presentation looks at who is behind the project, the aims of the project and the resistance to the project. The resistance stems from the fact that PROSAVANA aims to integrate peasants in the production process which is exclusively controlled by large TNCs and multilateral financing institutions; there is manipulation of information and intimidation of communities and CSOs opposed to PROSAVANA; there are imminent land grabbing processes in local communities by Brazilian, Japanese and national (as well as other nations) corporations and governments. The presentation argues that with PROSAVANA, the Mozambican government is in fact importing the internal contradictions of the Brazilian agrarian development model.

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Increasing Numbers of Homeless and Landless

There is a “I can give you an example of the Chisumbanje ethanol fuel project here in Chipinge. The project resulted in thousands of villagers being displaced to pave way for a sugar plantation so that thousands of hectares of land space could be created for the ethanol-producing project, consequently displacing poor villagers,” Dliwayo told IPS. The 40,000 hectare sugar cane plantation which started in 2008 left more than 1,754 households displaced, according to PYD.
Fifteen years ago, Zimbabwe embarked on a controversial land reform programme to address colonial land-ownership imbalances, but activists have dismissed the move as disastrous for this Southern African nation. “To say African nations like Zimbabwe addressed the land problem is untrue because land which African governments like Zimbabwe grabbed from white farmers was parcelled out to political elites at the expense of hordes of peasants here,” Terry Mutsvanga, an award-winning Zimbabwean rights activist, told IPS. “Land grabs in Africa have helped to perpetuate economic inequalities similar to the colonial era economic imbalances,” he added. In 2010, ZimOnline, a Zimbabwean news service, reported that about 2,200 well-connected black Zimbabwean elites controlled nearly 40 percent of the 14 million hectares of land seized from white farmers, with each farm ranging in size from 250 to 4,000 hectares, with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his family said to own 14 farms spanning at least 16,000 hectares.
 
Further up in East Africa, according to a 2011 presentation by Uganda’s Joshua Zake titled ‘Land Grabbing; silent pain for smallholder farmers in Uganda’, key characters of land grabbing in that country are also a few wealthy or powerful individuals against many vulnerable individuals or communities. Zake is Senior Programme Officer Environment and Natural Resources and Coordinator of the Uganda Forestry Working Group at Environmental Alert. According to Zake, land grabbing in Africa, particularly in Uganda, is promoted by the suspected presence of oil and other mineral resources beneath the land, such as in Uganda’s Amuru and Bulisa districts. Zake’s remarks fit well with Zimbabwe’s situation, where more than 800 families were displaced by government from Chiadzwa in Manicaland Province after the discovery of diamonds there in 2005.
 
But land grabs in Africa may also be rampant in towns and cities, according to private land developers here. “There is high demand of land for the construction of homes in towns and cities across Africa owing to the sharp rural-to-urban migration,” Etuna Nujoma, a private land developer based in Windhoek, the Namibian capital, told IPS. “The wealthy and the powerful as well as the corrupt politicians are taking advantage of the land demand and therefore often parcelling out urban land amongst themselves for resale at exorbitant prices at the expense of the poor.” Last year, irked by corrupt local authorities appearing to be dishing out land among themselves for resale, a group of informal settlement dwellers outside Namibia’s coastal holiday town of Swakopmund occupied municipal land with the intention of settling there.
 
With land grabs at their peak in Zimbabwe, members of the ruling Zanu-PF party are measuring out land pieces which they then give to people who pay in the range of 10 to 20 dollars for 30 to 50 square metres, depending on the areas in which they want to obtain housing stands, according to Andrew Nyanyadzi of Zanu-PF. “We don’t need permission from local authorities for us to have access to the land which our liberation war leaders fought for. It’s our land and we are therefore selling at affordable prices to ruling party loyalists,” Nyanyadzi told IPS.new scramble for Africa, with ordinary people facing displacement by the affluent and the powerful as huge tracts of land on the continent are grabbed by a minority, rights activists here say.
“Our forefathers cried foul during colonialism when their land was grabbed by colonialists more than a century ago, but today history repeats itself, with our own political leaders and wealthy countrymen looting land,” Claris Madhuku, director of the Platform for Youth Development (PYD), a democracy lobby group in Zimbabwe, told IPS.
 
Civil society activist Owen Dliwayo, who is programme officer for the Youth Dialogue Action Network, another lobby group here, said multinational companies were to blame in most African countries for land seizures. Consequently, lobby groups in Zimbabwe say havoc rules supreme in the country’s towns and cities. “In Harare, land belonging to the city has been taken over by known militant groups of people with links to Zanu-PF, whom police here are even afraid to apprehend,” Precious Shumba, the director of Harare Residents Trust, told IPS. “This is exactly what happened to Harare’s urban land in Hatcliff high density area, where housing cooperatives belonging to the ruling Zanu-PF leaders have grabbed council land using their political power,” Shumba said. However, like other countries across Africa, Zimbabwe’s local authority by-laws prohibit individuals or organisations from selling land that does not legally belong to them.
 
Meanwhile, in Mozambique, the poor are losing out to foreign investors on land rights there despite the state being the sole owner of land. Under the country’s constitution, there is no private land ownership – land and its associated resources are the property of the state – although the country’s Land Law grants private persons the right to use and benefit from the land whether or not they have a formal title. However, loopholes have emerged in the law. A survey last year by Mozambique’s National Farmers’ Union showed that there was a colonial-era style land grab there, with politically-connected companies in the former Portuguese colony seizing hundreds of thousands of hectares of farmland from peasants.
According to GRAIN, a non-profit organisation supporting small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems, peasants in northern Mozambique have difficulties keeping their lands as foreign companies set up large-scale agribusinesses there. The NGO says Mozambicans are being told that these projects will bring them benefits, but this is not how Caesar Guebuza and other Mozambican peasants see it. “Agricultural investments by foreign companies have not benefitted us, but rather we have lost land to these companies investing here and we are being treated as aliens in our own land,” Guebuza told IPS.
Economists blame the Mozambican government for favouring foreign investors, who now possess large swathes of state land. “The Mozambican government is known for siding with foreign investors who now occupy huge tracts of land for their own use as local peasants lose out on land, which is their birth right,” Kingston Nyakurukwa, a Zimbabwean independent economist, told IPS.
 
With foreign investors acquiring huge tracts of land ahead of locals in Africa, ActionAid Tanzania earlier this year said that through the European Union, United States and several European countries, the European Union’s New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition plans to invest 7.57 billion euros in agricultural development and food security across Africa. However, said Nyakurukwa, these will be business ventures that will strip Africans of their hard-earned money as they buy agricultural produce.
 
Similarly, in Nigeria, Mozambique and Tanzania, smallholder farmers are being moved off their land, paving the way for sugarcane, rice and other export crop-growing projects backed by New Alliance money, according to ActionAid Tanzania’s findings.
For Africans in Tanzania, big money might be gradually rendering them landless.
“Money from investors seem to be elbowing us out of our native lands here in Tanzania as no one has been offered the choice of whether to be resettled or not as we are being forcibly offered money or land for resettlement,” Moses Malunguja, a disgruntled peasant from Tanzania, told IPS.

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Mozambique Leases Huge Land Holdings to Foreigners

Mozambique, a country wracked by hunger, has signed away land concessions three times larger than Greater London to outside investors in the past decade, displacing thousands of farmers in the process, said a report released on Thursday. Since 2006, the country has signed at least 35 long-term land leases, covering more than 535,000 hectares, Mozambique's National Peasants Union (UNAC), a farmers' group, reported after surveying public records and interviewing displaced farmers. 

New large plantations, often joint ventures between foreign investors and politically-connected local officials, are producing food for export rather than feeding hungry local people, advocates said. An "alarmingly high" number of Mozambican children under five - more than 42 percent - are malnourished, according to the World Food Programme. "The small farmers who feed this country, producing over 90 percent of the food are now losing their land to make way for these large investments," Vicente Adriano, a UNAC spokesperson told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "The focus of these investments is on the production of soybeans and corn for export ... to emerging markets in Asia and Europe."

 About 70 percent of Mozambicans live in rural areas and depend on subsistence farming for survival, according to the United Nations. Thousands of these farmers have been forced from their land to make way for foreign-backed plantations, particularly in the fertile Nacala Corridor in northern Mozambique, the report said. 

While the country has experienced rapid economic growth in recent years, one third of the population of 24.5 million still face food shortages. Campaigners say such high levels of hunger mean land should be used to grow food for local people, rather than leased to large firms to produce cash crops for export. Foreigners cannot directly buy land in Mozambique, but they can make long-term leases for several decades or invest in joint ventures with local businessmen, Adriano said. In one case cited by the report, Mozambique Agricultural Corporation (MOZACO), a joint venture between local and foreign investors, acquired 2,389 hectares of land in Nampula province to grow soybeans and cotton in June 2013. 

The new plantation evicted 1,500 people who had been farming the land, without compensation, according to local residents cited in the report. They said plantation officials destroyed the local church of Santa Lucia. The firm wants to expand its plantations to 20,000 hectares and activists say this will displace thousands more, depriving others of crucial water resources from the Malema and Nataleia rivers. 

MOZACO does not publicly list its address or phone number and could not be reached for comment. JFS Holding, owned by a prominent family in Portugal, is one of the investors in MOZACO, the report said. The company did not respond to interview requests. Often foreign land deals are organised by obscure holding companies registered in offshore locations, making the true backers of projects difficult to track, the report said.

 Many farming families in Mozambique do not have individual title to the fields they farm, relying instead on customary land rights. Families who have been farming a parcel of land for ten years or more are supposed to be legally protected from eviction without compensation, the report said, although these land laws often are not enforced. 

Phone numbers for Mozambique's ministry of agriculture were not in service or rang unanswered.

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Mozambique - Replacing Colonialism With Foreign Companies' Land Grab

Peasants in northern Mozambique are struggling to keep their lands, as governments and foreign companies move aggressively to set up large-scale agribusiness projects. They are being told that these projects will bring them benefits. But, so far, the country's experience with foreign investment in agriculture has been disastrous.

This report looks at the companies already setting up agribusiness operations in the Nacala Corridor, an area that the government has prioritised for agribusiness development. These companies, typically structured through offshore tax havens and often connected to Mozambican political elites, have been grabbing lands and extracting wealth in ways reminiscent of the country's colonial days.

A new survey by Mozambique's National Farmers' Union (UNAC) and GRAIN shows there is a colonial-style scramble for Africa's farm lands under way. Politically-connected companies based in offshore tax havens have grabbed hundreds of thousands of hectares of farmland from peasants in Mozambique. (Download an Excel spreadsheet.)

From liberation to land grabs

Mozambique declared independence on June 25, 1975 after a decade of armed struggle. The peasants, workers, and students of Mozambique had defeated the Portuguese empire, guided by a common ideal of "freedom of man and earth".
The ideals of the national liberation struggle are enshrined in the Republic's first constitution, which recognises the right of the Mozambican people to resist all forms of oppression. These ideals also resonate in the first national anthem of the Republic of Mozambique, promising to turn the country into the grave of imperialism and exploitation.
Land was particularly important to the country's liberation struggle. Portuguese settlers had occupied vast tracts of the country's most fertile lands. When Mozambique achieved independence, these lands were immediately taken back and nationalised. Under the 1975 constitution, the state – on behalf of the Mozambican people – became the owner of all lands in the country. The constitution also recognised agriculture as the foundation of development with industry as its main engine, to be underpinned by a policy of national industrialisation led by state companies and cooperatives.

One year after independence, a brutal civil war broke out which ended only with the founding of a second republic in 1992 in the wake of the Rome General Peace Accords, signed between the government and RENAMO. Then followed two decades of structural adjustment policies imposed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Today, 40 years after independence, the revolutionary vision of the national liberation movement is in tatters and the Mozambican government is thoroughly dominated by a neoliberal ideology that relies narrowly on foreign investment for the development of all economic sectors, whether agriculture, infrastructure, fishing, tourism, resource extraction, health or education.

Foreign investment in the country has thus expanded rapidly in recent years. According to the National Bank of Mozambique, the net inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI) in 2013 amounted to $ 5.9 billion, up 15.8% from 2012, making Mozambique the third largest destination for FDI in Africa. Much of this capital has gone into resource extraction, such as mining and exploration of hydrocarbons. But agriculture is also emerging as an important target of foreign companies, especially in the Nacala Corridor, a vast stretch of fertile lands across northern Mozambique where millions of peasant families live and farm.

Over and above this, these investments are the result of a very strong alliance between international capital through the big multinational corporations, with the support of the governments in their home countries with the local political-economic elite with the intention of exploiting the country’s main agro-ecological regions and the potential in mining and hydrocarbons. It is within this context that this research analyses the movements of the different players in the occupation and appropriation of the Nacala Corridor, one of the country’s richest regions, which, besides being home to the country’s main ecosystems, is the repository of reserves of a number of minerals.

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Women of Mozambique Fight Back

We will not let ProSavana to invade our land and colonize us!


Ana Paula Taucale, peasant in Nampula
Province and member of UNAC (União
Nacional de Camponeses), Mozam-
bique.

The government of my country has grant-
ed large portions of land for large-scale
agriculture for exports, in the Nacala Cor-
ridor, involving Brazil and Japan. We,
peasants of the area oppose this project
and see it as an invasion that will drive to
large land grabs.

There is already evidence of the effects
of land grabbing in that area (Northern
Mozambique) on the peasants communi-
ties, and particularly on women. In Nam-
pula province, were I live and have my
plot, women are being prevented from
passing in the areas where the foreign
companies operate. We cannot access
firewood, gather wild foods or harvest
roots to use as medicines for our fami-
lies. In itself this is a clear violation of the
Mozambique Law of the Land. The Law
requires that community be consulted
to grant lands to companies, thus giv-
ing communities the right to refuse, as in
cases where such land granting implies
the abuse of their rights.

We reject this land-grabbing and we re-
ject the model of agriculture the ProSa-
vana program represents. We will do ev-
erything we can to stop it.
We as UNAC, together with other organi-
zations in the country, have launched in
June the National Campaign STOP Pro-
Savana. We want to bring this campaign
at international level - civil society organ-
isations in Brazil and Japan have already
joined us - and we want to activate legal
mechanisms at national and United Na-
tions level, to give greater responsibility
to those operating the ProSavana pro-
gram, for the damage they might cause
to the peasants communities in Mozam-
bique.

from here

The Morass in Mozambique

 Relative peace and stability since 1992 when the war ended, make Mozambique attractive to investors, and the economy has grown by more than 7 percent each year over the last 10 years, spurred by projects such as the MOZAL Aluminium plant near Maputo, and from mining by Brazilian company Vale in Tete province. Recent discoveries of huge quantities of natural gas continue to push growth upward. But the mineral and gas extraction projects create few jobs - just 3,800 in 2010, according to a 2014 report by Africa Economic Outlook. The few jobs that Mozambique's "megaprojects" create tend be highly qualified positions that are often taken by foreigners. The capital-intensive projects in Mozambique use heavy machinery to extract coal and gas and require little manpower. 

Mozambique's progress in reducing poverty and child mortality has stalled in recent years, and it remains one of the world's least developed countries, still greatly dependent on foreign aid, with about half the population living in poverty. A 2012 report by the Open Society Foundation estimated that 70 percent of people under age 35 in Mozambique - who form the majority of the 25 million population - cannot find stable employment. Today, the private sector creates just 18,000 jobs for 370,000 youth who enter the labour market yearly - a ratio of one job per 20 entrants.  Jobs in the Mozambique's public sector are highly sought after and a common complaint is that they are reserved only for those close to the ruling FRELIMO party, which has governed Mozambique since independence from Portugal in 1975.

"For many, the only way to get promoted is to join the ruling party," said Fernando Lima, a Mozambican analyst and CEO of independent media group Mediacoop 

According to Cremilde Domingo, a social worker at  Boane prison, the majority of young people she works  with commit crimes related to poverty and lack of  opportunity, such as burglary, robbery, and stealing  mobile phones. "We have natural resources but no jobs," she said.

Mozambique's health problems

Ebola has focused attention on the inability of local health systems to contain a major disease outbreak. But even in African nations untouched by the epidemic, health systems are struggling with insufficient financing and poor organization. That holds back progress against malaria, HIV/AIDS and basic health problems such as infant mortality.

Children in Mozambique are 15 times more likely to die before turning 5 than an American child.

Despite rapid economic growth, countries including Mozambique are spending on things other than health care, leaving much of Africa with too few clinics, hospital beds, doctors and health workers, and with inadequate systems for linking them together.

“It seems like health care is always at the end of the queue,” said Dr. Inacio Chichango, 31, director of the Chokwe hospital.

“We don’t have any politicians talking about health. There are no champions,” said Jorge Martin, an activist for CIP, a local advocacy group that has highlighted Mozambique’s underinvestment in health and its reluctance to sufficiently tax foreign companies.

Over the past decade, more than half of sub-Saharan countries have either cut the share of government spending devoted to health care, or barely increased it, according to World Health Organization data. In Mozambique, health care dropped from 15 percent of the government budget in 2001 to 9 percent in 2012. Many industrialized nations, including the United States, are under pressure to scale back foreign assistance during their own economic struggles. After nearly tripling between 2000 and 2010, global health aid has hit a plateau over the past four years, according to data compiled by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

“The need here is still huge,” said Jean-Luc Anglade, chief of mission in Mozambique for Doctors Without Borders.

Where one doctor can have responsibility for tens of thousands of patients, the health workers are a first line of defense against malaria, pneumonia and diarrhea, three of the deadliest threats to young children. Many global health experts believe that such programs can make a huge difference if implemented correctly. There are about 3,000 such health workers in Mozambique, eventually to expand to 12,000. Each worker is given basic medical training and outfitted with a green bag with basic diagnostic kits, antibiotics and other drugs to treat the three illnesses. Ethiopia has deployed nearly 40,000 community health workers in the past decade.

From here 

The System That benefits A Few

“NO to ProSavana Campaign”: 

Mozambicans seek regional solidarity (Bulawayo, Zimbabwe) 

UNAC, the Mozambique Union of Farmers, a member of La Via Campesina regionalises its “NO To ProSavana” campaign. The ProSavana, a mega agri-business project, is located in Mozambique and involves Brazil and Japan. The project, if developed, aims to turn 14.5 million hectares of agricultural land in the Nacala Corridor in Northern Mozambique, currently being used by small-scale farmers, into industrial monoculture agriculture driven by corporations for export production. UNAC participated in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) People’s Summit in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.

 It saw the regional gathering as an opportunity to promote and expand its campaign, and to seek and build support from other regional movements against the Prosavana project. UNAC, during the agricultural and land policies plenary, shared experiences on the project and how some of its farmer members have been affected. Many participants during the plenary discussions pointed out that the land-grabbing is a phenomenon affecting all Southern Africa. They went further to say that the struggle against ProSavana ‘is not only a national campaign, it is a regional one. We need support from Southern African and other international movements’.

Such sentiments resonated with those of Agostinho Bento, UNAC advocacy officer who called for solidarity in campaigning against the program, which could affect the farmers’ livelihood. Agostinho Bento argued that despite denial by the Mozambican government, ProSavana ‘is not about development, it will destroy the local system of food productions and small-scale farmers’ livelihood. We don’t want a development that benefits a few, but rather an inclusive process’.

read more here

Mozambicans Need This Land To Produce And Live

Evidence of the effects of land grabbing in the region, where ProSavana is being implemented, on the peasants particularly women is beginning to show. In Nampula province, women are being prevented from passing in the areas where the foreign companies operate. They cannot access the firewood or gather wild foods. 

This reality was reported during a discussion panel on “Structural challenges to development of peasant agriculture in Mozambique: peoples’ demands in regard to ProSavana”, at the Second Triangular Conference of the Peoples, held on 24 July 2014, in Maputo. 

In this panel, many reports were made on the violation of the access rights to land of women in particular. In rural areas, women are the ones who work the land to provide for their families and fetch firewood to cook. Ana Paula, a peasant from the peasant movement UNAC based in Nampula, said that in that region women are forbidden to exercise their right to use and exploit the land, which, in itself is a clear violation of the Law of the Land. 

This Law requires that community be consulted to grant lands to companies, thus giving communities the right to refuse, as in cases where such land granting implies the abuse of their rights.

 “We women are suffering from grabbing of the land. As women, we can’t even pass through the lands where the project is based to fetch firewood, or to take roots from the soil to use for medicines for our families. As a result, we are going through really hard times because of these companies that are using the land in Nampula and in other areas” said Ana Paula, peasant and leader of UNAC.

 She called on the government to cease the production of soy and other crops for export as they cause health problems due to the use of agro-toxins, as it happened in Brazil in the Cerado brasileiro region. 

“We ask the government to hear the peasants and not allow the production of crops that bring agro-toxins, for they cause diseases. And I want to call on the governments of Japan and Brazil to stop thinking that we have large portions of available and abandoned land in Mozambique. The Mozambican population is growing and needs this land to produce and to live” said Ana. 

According to her, the peasants need technical support, an increase in quality of local seeds and access to markets to sell their products at a fair price.

from here

A Path Towards The Destruction Of Peasant Agriculture In Mozambique

In 2009, the governments of Brazil, Japan and Mozambique signed an agreement to implement the so-called Cooperation for the Agricultural Development of the Tropical Savannah in Mozambique (Pro SAVANA). The Program has been promoted by the governments as a sustainable agriculture development project for the region. However, Mozambican organizations and movements, in addition to denouncing a “total lack of transparency, consultation and public participation”, are stating that the project threatens biodiversity, the lives of millions of peasants and consequently the production and food sovereignty of the country.

In an interview with Real World Radio, Anabela Lemos, chair of Justica Ambiental – Friends of the Earth Mozambique, sad that the goal of the program is to “implement large-scale agribusiness; bring in technologies, the experience and know-how of soy in Brazil and export the production to Japan: a path towards the destruction of peasant agriculture”. The movements that oppose to the implementation of this program had an even clearer view of their goals after having access to a draft of the program´s Master Plan, not due to a dialogue with governments, but after the document was leaked. In a letter signed by several organizations to denounce the Plan, they state that “it only considers how small farmers can support agribusiness”.

Two guidelines included in the plan aim to this, according to the letter: “Drive farmers away from shifting agriculture and the traditional land management techniques to make them adopt intensive farming techniques based on commercial seeds, chemical production factors and private property titles; and push farmers to a production regime by contracts with agricultural and transforming companies”. Lemos said that the government has not provided any answers to organizations about, for instance: the surface to be covered by the program or the number of people affected by it. Still, the agribusiness actors seem to be quite certain about ProSAVANA´s goals.

Brazilian agribusiness publication Dinheiro Rural published an article about the program called “Rumo a Africa”. In the article, the Nacala Corridor (where the project would take place) is described as “14 millions of hectares with potential to produce rice, soy, maize, cotton, sunflower and peanuts, which could benefit from privileged infrastructure: the Nacala port, the largest deep-water port in the east coast of Africa. “This is perhaps the largest area to develop agriculture in the continent, with profits estimated between 18 and 23 percent annually”, said the coordinator of the Getulio Vargas Projectos Foudation, Cleber Guarany”.

In Mozambique there is widespread concern, since approximately 4 million peasants live in this area: “I believe that half of them would be affected one way or the other”, said the environmental activist. Lemos concluded: “Peasants represent 80% of the work force in Mozambique and feed 90% of the country. They want to destroy all this, leaving it in the hands of multinational companies, which we already know how they act here in Mozambique”. 

from here

The Wealth Divide in Mozambique

Mozambique has one of the highest real GDP growth rates in the world, at 7.5 per cent.

 “It certainly is boom time for the Mozambican economy,” Markus Weimer, a senior analyst at Control Risks, an independent global risk consultancy based in London and Maputo. “The country is performing strongly in a gloomy global context, and GDP growth rates are predicted to be high (above seven per cent) for the coming years.”

Yet it ranks 185th out of 187 countries on the 2013 United Nations Human Development Index by the UN Development Programme. It is one of the poorest countries in the world, with more than 55 per cent of its 23.9 million people officially living below the poverty line. Analysts say Mozambique is a glaring illustration that the “trickle down” effect of development capitalism does not work.

The Mozambican civil war began in 1977 and ended 15 years later in 1992.  In 2011 Mozambique discovered offshore gas fields.

 “There is a growing divide here: between old and young, between rich and poor. We are the new generation, born in the war. We are educated, we want jobs, but we can’t get them. We live in areas where the roads are awful and there is no public lighting, no sewage system,” Feling Capella, a journalist and poet tells IPS.

Lined up along the streets of central Maputo, Mozambique’s capital city, are expensive European-style bars and restaurants with sophisticated names like Café Continental, Nautilus and Mundos. And the residential houses and flats in the capital of this southern African nation are a flabbergasting and bewildering array of 1960s modernist and Art Deco icons, mixed with new-money skyscrapers. Further away in the new Chinese-built airport that was completed in February 2013, aftershaves sell for $230 and bottles of Dom Pérignon, a vintage champagne, cost $320. That is literally three months’ salary for the average worker, who lives on 3,000 metacals ($100) a month.

Who are these new super-rich? A variety of answers emerge: They are government ministers; they are friends and relatives of the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo), the ruling party; they are people working with and for the UN; and a small handful are oil and gas investors and associated traders. Dentists and doctors here do not own the newest cars and their sunglasses are not international brands such as Gucci or Prada.

Sebastien Marlier, an analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit who tracks developments in Mozambique, explained: “Corruption has become a major concern in Mozambique. A small elite associated with the ruling party and with strong business interests dominates the economy.”

The director of Mozambique Human Rights League and Mozambique’s national winner of the Secretary’s International Women of Courage Award for 2010, Dr Alice Mabota, is candid about corruption. “People are very angry about corruption. They want the right decisions taken by the right people. Frelimo knows they have a problem. I hope the next generation is able to address these problems,”

The struggle doesn't continue

In Mozambique the Frelimo Fourth Congress in 1983, the call went out to "Defend the Fatherland, Overcome Underdevelopment, Build Socialism". The national anthem of the time promised to make Mozambique "the grave of capitalism and exploitation". Frelimo's own anthem described party members as "soldiers of the people, marching forward in the struggle against the bourgeoisie".


It was not to be. Mozambique joined the World Bank and the IMF in 1985. Western donors, even friendly ones in Scandinavia, made it clear that a programme with the IMF was a condition for continuing assistance. Some may have viewed it as a temporary diversion, assuming that the march towards a classless society would resume in the near future. But it was not to be.

In 1989, Frelimo quietly dropped Marxism-Leninism from its statutes. The following year it was no longer a "People's Republic", but just "the Republic of Mozambique".

Frelimo's slogan "A Luta Continua!" ("The Struggle Continues!") is rarely heard nowadays.

The benefits of economic growth are not being spread throughout society, and poverty reduction has faltered. The household surveys by Mozambique's National Statistics Institute showed that the number living below the poverty line fell from 69% in 1997 to 54.1% in 2003. But the next survey, in 2009, suggested that the government's efforts to alleviate poverty had stagnated, and that the poverty rate was now 54.7%.
A growing gap between rich and poor is evident from the boom in luxury housing built in the fashionable parts of Maputo, and the explosion in car ownership. Traffic jams, unheard of 20 years ago, are now a regular feature of Maputo life. But the majority of Mozambicans still live in huts or shacks, and depend on buses for their transport. 64% still have no electricity.
Frelimo policy has somersaulted in the past three decades, but the party's grip on power remains strong

Mozambique's Resource Curse

When Augusto Conselho Chachoka and his neighbors heard that the world's biggest coal mine was to be built on their land, a tantalizing new future floated before them. Instead of scraping by as subsistence farmers, they would earn wages as miners, they thought. The mining company would build them sturdy new houses, it seemed. Finally, a slice of the wealth that has propelled Mozambique from its war-addled past to its newfound status as one of the world's fastest-growing economies would be theirs. But to get to the coal, hundreds of villagers living atop it had to be moved. The company held a series of meetings with community members and government officials, laying out its plans to build tidy new bungalows for each family and upgrade public services. As the prospect of huge new investments in their rural corner of the world beckoned, villagers anticipated a whole new life: jobs, houses, education, and even free food.

Instead, they ended up being moved 25 miles away from the mine, living in crumbling, leaky houses, farming barren plots of land, far from any kind of jobs that the mine might create and farther than ever from Mozambique's growth miracle. The promised water taps and electricity never arrived. Earlier this year, the people of Cateme sent a letter to local government officials and Vale demanding that their complaints about the resettlement process be addressed, threatening to block the railway line that passes through their village carrying coal to the port. When they received no reply, they occupied the rail line. The police descended upon them, chasing them away and roughing up those who resisted removal. Eventually, contractors came to install electricity. The underlying lack of access to good land and water persist. Hopes that farmers would be able to sell their produce to feed the boom in this mining area have so far not been met: much of the food is flown in.

 Mozambique is one of the poorest nations in the world, broken by a brutal colonial legacy, a 16-year civil war and failed experiments with economic policy. But it is also one of the so-called African Lions: countries that are growing at well above 6 percent annually, even amid the global downturn.

Vale, the Brazilian mining company, is planning to invest $6 billion in its coal operation. The coal deposits in Moatize represent one of the biggest untapped reserves in the world, and the Brazilian mining company Vale has placed a big bet on it. Rio Tinto will soon begin producing coal in northern Mozambique. Gas projects could bring in far more, as much as $70 billion, according to World Bank estimates. Mozambique's location on Africa's southeastern coast means it is perfectly positioned to feed hungry markets in southern and eastern Asia.

Yet millions are stuck below the poverty line.  "You get these rich countries with poor people," said the economist Joseph Stiglitz, who recently visited Mozambique and has written on the struggle of resource-rich countries to develop. "You have all this money flowing in, but you don't have real job creation and you don't have sustained growth." 

 

 It is a problem in resource-rich countries across Africa. The World Bank said in October that rapidly growing economies powered by oil, gas and minerals have seen poverty levels fall more slowly than countries without those resources. In Gabon and Angola, the percentage of people living in extreme poverty has even increased as growth has spiked. 

In Mozambique, according to an analysis by the United States Agency for International Development, "The effects of megaprojects on living standards were found to be very modest," the report said. "These projects, over all, have created few jobs. And linkages to the public budget via tax revenues have also been small because of tax exemptions."

Strong economic growth almost completely bypasses the rural poor, and in some ways can leave them even worse off. "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer," Mr. Chachoka said. "That is what is happening here."

wooden chips for dinner

"I am hungry. Everyone is hungry. I am hungry all the time"

Globally, malnutrition is the key cause of the deaths of 2.6 million children each year. On present trends, the bodies and brains of an additional 450 million worldwide will fail to develop properly because of inadequate diet over the next 15 years, according to a report published by Save the Children.

Olinda Novela and her children will dine on tree root soup. This is what they ate for breakfast, and what they will likely eat tomorrow. The soup, made from mashed wood shavings boiled in salty water, has zero nutritional value. It is a thin, brown, evil-looking gruel. But in remote, drought-stricken Mahache village, about five hours' drive north from Mozambique's capital, Maputo, there is simply no other choice.

They are not actually starving – not yet, anyway – but they are chronically malnourished, according to visiting community health workers. They have much in common with many other Mozambican children, with an estimated 44% of under-fives physically or mentally impaired – the technical term is stunted – because of severe malnutrition. Their weakened immune systems increase their susceptibility to malaria, HIV, and other fatal diseases.

Experts predict that in the next decade there will be 4 million chronically malnourished children in Mozambique, which despite recent, rapid economic growth and the discovery of large natural gas deposits remains one of the world's poorest countries.

"Malnutrition is a hidden problem, a hidden killer," said Carina Hassane Ismael of the independent Food Security and Nutrition Association in Maputo. "It's not like a famine. It can be hard to spot because the children are not actually starving."

At the Camp David G-8 meeting beginning Obama will unveil a "new alliance" initiative involving selected African countries and private sector companies. The plan entails a $1bn, 10-year effort to lift 50 million people out of food poverty through increased investment in agricultural development.

"The G8 is always making plans but they don't implement them," said Rafael Uaiene, assistant professor of international development with Michigan State University, who is based in Maputo, and is a former director of Mozambique's National Agricultural Research Institute. "The trouble is, millions of dollars are committed but they never reach the ground in most cases."

G8's L'Aquila summit in 2009, which saw $6bn in new money pledged for food security and agricultural initiatives over three years. By last July, only 22% of the money had been spent.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/may/16/g8-malnutrition-hidden-killer-mozambique

health and IQ

In Mozambique, one in 11 children dies within the first year of life. One in seven dies within five years. The numbers are even higher in rural areas.Children here battle deadly diseases, like malaria, HIV, and conditions like diarrhea, and often lose the fight.

A new study suggests the babies who do survive face an additional lifelong challenge: lower intelligence. The study concludes that babies who use their body's energy to fight disease will not have enough energy left to fully develop their brains.

Christopher Eppig, a graduate student at the University of New Mexico, authored the study, explained:
"I like to think of this in terms of sort of economics. So, the body has a finite amount of physical energy that it can spend in a limited number of areas. As a child at a younger age than 5, one estimate shows the brain occupying more than half of the body's entire energy budget. And at newborn -- as a newborn, that number may be as high as 87 percent. And another expensive thing that the body does is fights off infectious disease. And so, like any kind of budget, if you have a limited amount of funds, if you take money out of one area, it has to come from somewhere.The structure and the size of our brain is what gives us our intelligence. And, so, exposure to disease early in childhood can affect the way the brain is built, the way it's structured. And throughout your adult life, you can be left with a brain that wasn't built quite correctly."

Eppig found that countries with the highest levels of infectious disease also had the lowest average I.Q.s. Researchers matched I.Q. estimates of 192 countries against 28 infectious diseases listed by the World Health Organization. The study controlled for other potential factors in a nation's average I.Q. factors like quality and access to education, annual income levels, and even climate. And while those factors play a role, researchers found infectious disease to be the most powerful predictor of I.Q. Mozambique, which ranks at the bottom of I.Q. scores, also tops the charts in disease burden.

The study basically says that, if you fight infectious disease, that you will raise I.Q. of a nation. If this proposition is true, by fighting infectious diseases, you bring up the I.Q. of a nation,