In June 2022, the TFSA team travelled to Mozambique with our funder, the UK Government. This much anticipated visit served to develop, maintain and solidify stakeholder relationships in the country where our work has focused on three main areas:
- Equip businesses and business support organisations to meet the standards and regulations in the aquaculture and fruits, nuts and vegetable sectors;
- increasing the participation of women in export trade through access to information, networking and advanced technical training;
- developing partner business support organisations into ‘Knowledge Centres’ that facilitate export trade training and disseminate trade knowledge to their member firms.
TFSA’s work and research in the fruits, nuts and vegetables sector has identified phytosanitary issues as a key barrier to export. Through TFSA’s implementing partner, Elim Services, and the British High Commission in Mozambique, FRUTISUL was identified as the ideal partner to successfully deliver trainings that will help farmers and government officials to address the phytosanitary compliance challenges. FRUTISUL, a locally based private business support organisation, has the largest membership of producers and exporters of fruits in the country, and is excellently placed as an information nexus between the government (National Department of Plant Phytosanitary Services, hosted within the Mozambican Agriculture Research Institute) and exporting private sector commercial farmers.
The TFSA-funded phytosanitary training was specifically designed to assist government officials, farmers and farming staff to identify and catalogue different diseases (e.g. fruit-fly infestation) and to provide guidance on best agriculture practices. Without this training farmers may fail to protect their production and risk a drastic reduction in the exports in markets such as the EU, UAE and Japan, as local production can be significantly reduced by disease and infestation. The training was attended by six members of the National and Provincial Plant Protection Department and staff from large-scale commercial farms. This video of Alindo Mendoca, Director of CITRUM, a Mozambican company based in Boane, had this to say about the training
“This training was the best because it is dealing with a subject that was already a concern for us who are in the export industry and for small farmers as well. In this training we acquired new tools such as understanding what are the mechanisms to be followed in the process of exporting products, and taking into consideration the quality, terms of the phytosanitary area and which entities are involved.”
Watch this video and hear more of his take-aways from the phytosanitary training;
