Maputo, June 20, 2025 (Lusa) - Mozambican politician Venâncio Mondlane has submitted letters to parliament and the attorney general’s office (PGR) requesting an investigation into the Sustenta agricultural project to ascertain “probity in management”, considering that there are “strong indications” of public crime.
“I have identified 28 serious issues with Sustenta (…).” [For example], it was created in 2016, nine years have passed and not a single financial accountability report has ever been presented, which is a very serious mistake,” said Venâncio Mondlane on Thursday during a symposium in Maputo organised by the Mozambican non-governmental organisation Centro de Integridade Pública (CIP).
The Sustenta programme, which was launched in February 2017 in two Mozambican provinces (Nampula and Zambézia), aims to provide small farmers with capacity, seeds and production strategies, as well as financing.
In the letter submitted shortly before to the parliament in Maputo, Mondlane called for the creation of a parliamentary commission of inquiry into Sustenta, as well as a debate on the agricultural project by MPs.
“Today I submitted a letter to the speaker of parliament (...) requesting that she, within her powers and procedural and regulatory frameworks, bring this proposal up for discussion in parliament (...) they have to respond to this,” he said, also alluding to a debate on social media about Sustenta.
The debate arose after the new Mozambican Minister of Agriculture said this month that he was unaware of the status of the agricultural programme when questioned by the local media.
Venâncio Mondlane, a presidential candidate in the October 9 general elections who does not recognise the official results of that vote, claims there is “criminal evidence or evidence of mismanagement” in the Sustenta project, saying he has alleged evidence, which he has submitted to the attorney general in an official letter.
“Today I submitted to the prosecutor (…) the evidence and the grounds on which I believe this is a case with strong indications of being a public crime. So the prosecutor has work to do, the parliament has work to do,” the politician concluded.
The programme was launched by the then President of Mozambique, Filipe Nyusi, with initial support of 16 billion meticais (€192 million) from the World Bank.
As a way of resisting high poverty rates and chronic malnutrition, most of the Mozambican people, who live in rural areas, resort to subsistence farming as their only means of survival.
The Mozambican government, which has defined agriculture as a priority for the domestic economy, has pointed to the industrialisation of the sector and is committed to marketing as one of its main challenges.
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