Projects

The project proponent is the Maputo Provincial Government and the lead financier is the African Development Bank. The project will do much to improve job opportunities, alleviate poverty and provide income earning opportunities and thereby improve livelihoods in the Magude and Moamba Districts of Maputo Province. Beneficiaries will include the COFAMOSA membership, farmer associations, small scale farmers (plus their dependents) and service providers.

In 2017 Booker Tate, in association with Leadership Business Consulting, a Mozambican fi rm, was engaged as Consultant to design the PPP framework/agreement for the COFAMOSA project. The process, which took place over several months, involved assembling a multi-disciplinary team of legal, social and technical specialists and engaging project stakeholders which numbered over 15 Mozambican government, parastatal and commercial entities The engagement process unravelled a wide range of entrenched views and differing expectations. It culminated in a workshop well attended by public and private stakeholders in Mozambique which served to address key issues, review and discuss the consultant’s draft PPP framework/agreement and agree a way forward. Such PPP frameworks are common for infrastructure projects such as toll roads but are much less common in agriculture due to the complicated arrangements for repayment surety. This project is therefore highly innovative. The PPP framework approach should provide the key to unlocking this much needed project, leading to its financing and implementation and thereby the realisation of significant economic and social benefits to the local community. COFAMOSA Irrigation Project in the Maputo province of Mozambique is a greenfield 10 000 hectare irrigated sugarcane development project with 1 000 hectares of food security production. Harvested sugarcane will be delivered under contract to the nearby Xinavane sugar mill owned and operated by Tongaat Hulett Sugar of South Africa.

The project area is blessed with fine topography, fertile soils and readily available irrigation water from the existing Corumana Dam. It just needs a viable agri-industrial enterprise to kick-start the local economy. Sugarcane is one such crop that has a good track record in Mozambique and the existing sugar mill at Xinavane is a readymade off taker for the crop grown by the smallholder farmers.