LAND DISPUTES DELAY BELA VISTA RICE PROJECT

Land disputes in the southernmost district of Matutuine, Maputo province, are delaying the implementation of a project to grow and process rice which aims to cut Mozambique’s rice imports by a fifth.The Bela Vista Rice Project is co-owned by the Libyan state’s Libyan African Investment Portfolio (LAP) and the Mozambican company Ubuntu.The project plans to grow rice in an area of six thousand hectares in the initial phase beginning in September this year. That would produce around 40,000 tonnes of rice per year. The plan is to continue expanding the project until it covers an area of 20,000 hectares.However, the plan is being endangered by land disputes.The project currently only has access to 1,800 hectares of which 400 hectares are used for seed production. The remaining 1,400 hectares are not situated in a contiguous block, which is a barrier to installing an effective irrigation system.According to the newspaper “Diario de Mocambique”, the chief in the locality of Tinonganine, Abel Machango, lamented that just before the project was due to be launched many people suddenly appeared brandishing land titles, known as DUATs, covering areas where the project had planned to expand. A further problem is that some households are refusing to hand over their fields to the project. Machango complained that some of these citizens have never used or developed the land covered by these documents. He said that under normal conditions the DUATs should have been revoked because the land was not used or developed within five years, as demanded by the law.The local traditional leader (regulo) Eduardo Santaka stated that the delay in handing over the land to the project was due to the Mozambican government and the investors agreeing that the land should be disbursed in a phased manner.
“The government has to know who has handed over the land and what the benefits are to the community, district, province and country in general. We see that this company is responsible. The land will be dispensed in a phased manner”, promised Santaka.According to Machango, the authorities are working to help the community to understand the need to welcome the project and hand over part of their land. In return they will benefit from the help that the company is promising to provide as part of its social responsibility.Once fully operational the project aims to employ 400 workers.