MOZAMBIQUE – The President of the Republic of Mozambique, Filipe Nyusi has inaugurated the country’s largest and most modern meat processing unit in the western city of Tete.
Known as the Canefood Processing Unit, the abattoir can process 200 head of cattle and 500 goats a day.
The facility is fashioned with state-of-the-art equipment that will ensure it meets the highest standards of international certification for slaughter, processing, and conservation.
This will not only contribute to the gradual elimination of the practice of indiscriminately butchering animals without appropriate sanitary conditions – which is an attack on public health, but also opens prospects of export of quality meat to international markets.
The factory also meets the highest environmental sustainability standards, particularly on waste water recycling.
“With this undertaking, we have accepted high quality standards, and we are integrating the family livestock sector into the national market and potentially the foreign market, with the purpose of generating income and improving living conditions for rural families, in a province with excellent conditions for livestock activity,” declared the President.
There are about 2.2 million head of cattle in Mozambique, and 16 per cent of these animals are in Tete. The country also has about 4.9 million small ruminants (such as goats and sheep).
Construction of the unit benefitted from public financing through preferential lines of credit provided by the World Bank, the African Development Bank (ADB), and the Catalytic Fund, through the government’s agricultural development programme, Sustenta.
Its establishment which commenced in 2019 is in line with Mozambique National Development Strategy 2015-2035, which seeks to improve the living conditions of the population through structural transformation of the economy and expansion and diversification of the production base.
Further driving the industrialization agenda of the South African nation, the African Development Bank Group in the beginning of the year approved a US$47.09 million grant for the first phase of Mozambique’s Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zone (SPAZ).
To be established at Pemba-Lichinga Integrated Development Corridor in Niassa province, the project is part of the Agro-Industrial Processing Zones that the developmental bank seeks to establish in 18 African countries.
Being a flagship of the bank’s Feed Africa Strategy, the zones will enable agricultural producers, processors, aggregators, and distributors to operate in the same vicinity to reduce transaction costs and share business development services for increased productivity and competitiveness.
Coupled with bringing adequate infrastructure (energy, water, roads, ICT, etc.) to rural areas of high agricultural potential, SAPZs will attract investments from private agro-industrialists/entrepreneurs to contribute to the economic and social development of rural areas.
In Mozambique, the grant will help improve agricultural productivity and agribusiness development in the Niassa province by advancing institutional capacity, skills, and entrepreneurship to spur agricultural value chain growth.
The project will pilot improved policy and development coordination between the Niassa province and national departments, especially with the Ministry of Industry and Commerce and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
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