AFSUN Policy Brief: Maputo

The Urban Food Security Baseline Survey for Maputo
collected date from 391 households located in 40 of the
city’s 54 bairros. The results of the survey confirm that
Maputo city dwellers face difficult challenges, including
chronic food poverty. Unlike the trend of the country that
shows a decline on poverty index the city of Maputo
indicates the contrary. Maputo has become a poor city since
the introduction of the Action Plan of Poverty Reduction. At
the same time, the city has unprecedented growth
population rates especially in the poorest bairros. Maputo
has registered an average population growth rate of 4.5%
between 1980 and 1990 and 1.7% between 1990 and 1997;
this is in contrast to rates in the poorest areas which vary
between the lowest at 11.3% in Laulane to the highest at
39.8% in Costa do Sol. It is in these bairros where dwellers
have witnessed the failure of the system to provide basic
services, adequate and enough food and jobs. Food
insecurity has become a reality in Maputo, despite the
steady increase in the availability to food at the city scale.