Newsies

Once again, there has been a lull in exciting adventures, novel insights, health scares (praise Jesus), or people doing incredibly stupid things that I can write about for all of you lovely folk. So, it's time for a Mozambique news update!

==> Mozambique has been barred from flying to Europe. More specifically, the only airline in Mozambique has been barred from making a twice-a-week flight to Portugal. Last year the international board that governs airplanes---and for that matter dirigibles and other lighter-than-air vehicles, it stands to reason---said that the planes were banned from entering European airspace because of safety. This started a he-said, she-said between Europe and Mozambique. Upon asking for valid reasons, the board listed almost 70 safety regulations the airline was not meeting.

A year has passed and the Europeans renewed the ban for another year. Mozambique is outraged for having not been given an explanation. The explanations was basically “no improvement”. It's all very political, but those in the know know that those twice weekly flights have been described by European diplomats as flying drug mules. Ergo, the assumption is that they cracked down on safety because of the flood of drugs coming in on the flights.

==>A new wave of Mozambicans are coming back from having opportunities to study abroad at European and American universities. Unfortunately, when they return with their degrees they are finding it difficult to get the government to recognize their degrees as valid, saying they have no way to know if, for example, the University of Paris, meets Mozambican standards. Dozens of students made the news by protesting against, wait for it, the first lady! And she does NOT have anything to do with ministry of education. The reason, they claimed, that the government needs to certify their degrees is so that they can get government jobs. They claim to suffer from being over-qualified for private sector work, thus needing gov't jobs, and over the years dozens of graduates have had to return to their country of study to look for work.

==> Much of Africa has not suffered from the economic downturn that Europe and America has suffered. Much of that is because countries are starting to take control of natural resources and use those to fuel what economic activity is occurring. Most of the natural resources in Mozambique are either coal mines or agriculture. (I don't consider timber as contributing because, while trees are being exported in huge numbers, all the work is being done by Chinese laborers and incredible amounts are exported unprocessed and illegally).

However, a landmark study brought before the World Bank shows that huge agricultural projects, most all of which are led by foreign investment, do not lead to enhanced wealth, development, or food security like they thought it would. They argue that, while industrialized farming provides more food, so many people sit unable work something else that they suffer immensely. While food production would decrees, they recommend abandoning this practice and return to let local farmers do what they've always been doing to ensure their livelihood. The prospect of industrialized farming was very attractive several years ago when these projects first started. Not only is production still pitifullly low, but only 5% of farmland is irrigated. 85% of people farm with only hand tools, 11% of farmers have animals for labor, and 2% have tractors.