Mozambique's Minister of Science and Technology, Venancio Massingue, has defended the government's call for a "green revolution," stressing that this meant boosting production through a better use of land and water resources, and through such inputs as improved seeds.
"We want to step up soil improvement, so that agricultural products can benefit from the mineral resources the country possesses that can fertilise soil, although many people just don't know about them", he said.
As an example he cited diatomite. This is a sedimentary rock mainly composed of the fossilised remains of single-celled plants known as diatoms. It has a wide variety of uses, including as a fertiliser, and Mozambique possesses rich deposits of it. Massingue said diatomite is being used to enrich soils to boost production of vegetables such as cucumbers in parts of Maputo province.
As for seeds, the Minister insisted that improved varieties can be developed in Mozambique, rather than simply importing them.
The three measures of improving the soil, improving seeds, and improving irrigation were the pre-conditions for raised production, and improved security and marketing.
Linked to the planned green revolution are the "Millennium Villages," although so far only one of these has been set up, at Chibuto, in the southern province of Gaza.The Millennium Village Project is the brainchild of Columbia University's Earth Institute, headed by renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs, who was adviser to former UN Seretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The project describes its goal as "ending extreme poverty, one village at a time."
Massingue said such a village "is not a series of buildings and roads", but rather a way of providing added value that can improve agriculture and agro-processing, and access to health and education.
The costs of the Millennium Village initiative are 350,000 US dollars per year per village for the five year take-off period. A second village is being planned in the northern province of Nampula, and Massingue hoped that within five years there will be at least one Millennium Village in each province. The Millennium Village Project document focuses on "empowering individual African villages to achieve the MDGs by implementing a comprehensive set of community-based, low cost and integrated rural development strategies." In the Mozambican case, Massingue wanted to see the villages strongly linked to the Regional Science and Technology Centres, which his Ministry has been establishing in the north, centre and south of the country.
As for the number of scientists in the country, Massingue said that currently about 660 are working in Mozambican research institutions. A further 2,000 are working in educational institutions, but their main task is teaching rather than research.
The government's target is that by 2025 there should be at least 6,500 Mozambican scientists working on laboratory-based research. To achieve this target, the government is mobilising scholarships for masters degrees and doctorates in scientific disciplines - among the offers are 40 annual scholarships from Brazil, 20 from India, five from Argentina, four from Cuba and six from Finland.
But to meet the target, scholarships abroad are not enough. "We must also rely on great commitment to scientific training in our own institutions of higher education", said Massingue.
The Ministry has set up a data bank on the country's research institutions - currently there are 17 such bodies - and has held courses on research methodologies, in which 116 researchers have been trained.
Massingue stressed that the priorities for research must be those areas which have a tangible impact on people's lives. "The challenge for researchers is to undertake research that solves problems - not research that is merely for publications, for seminars and for workshops," he said.
allafrica.com
