Following the 2nd Africa EBA for food security conference convened on 30-31 July 2015 by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in collaboration with the African Union Commission (AUC) Africa  and partners where over 1200 delegates from all across Africa adopted the Nairobi Action Agenda and the Constitution of the Ecosystems Based Adaptation for Food Security Assembly (EBAFOSA), the instruments establishing the Ecosystem Based Adaptation for Food Security Assembly, the EBAFOSA Mozambique  National Branch has been launched. EBAFOSA is an inclusive pan-African policy framework and implementation platform to ensure EBA driven agriculture and its value-chains, especially clean energy access to catalyze rural agro-industrialization, enhanced access to markets and enhanced access to affordable agro-financing, are up-scaled to being the norm in policy and practice across the entire continent and to ensure that grandeur development blueprints, especially Agenda 2030 and the SDGs, COP21 outcomes and the AU Agenda 2063 are adequately domesticated and implemented, - all these through a country driven process. The aim is to achieve 5 distinct benefits in countries, and ultimately across Africa – food & nutritional security, climate adaptation, enhanced ecosystems capacity and creation of income and job opportunities.

Article 7 of the EBAFOSA constitution establishes the structure of EBAFOSA and Country branches are the critical component where impactful activities are undertaken in a country led process. Country branches register local, continental and global actors within the country and facilitate their interactions and partnership to achieve implementation.

It is against this backdrop that the Mozambique National Branch hosted by the National Sustainable Development Council (CONDES).was launched at Hotel VIP in Maputo, under the theme “Re-shaping Mozambique food security and climate resilience through EBAFOSA”. The launch event under the leadership of the EBAFOSA Mozambique officials, and the government, the private sector both large and small to medium enterprises, and the non-governmental, attracted about 200 delegates from academia, other UN agencies specifically UN FAO and WFP, the UN Resident Coordinator, agro-value chain actors including Small scale farmers, representatives from NGOs, seed companies, Entrepreneurs, and Government departments across the country. The Guest of Honour at the launch was the Minister of land, Environment and Rural development, who formally launched the branch. The launch event served to crystalize partnerships with policy level and UN stakeholders. The Ministry of Land, Environment and Rural Development Permanent Secretary lauded the establishing of EBAFOSA National Branch, demonstrating both policy level endorsements of EBAFOSA and its country driveness, two crucial key success factors for UNEP country interventions.

In her remarks, the Permanent Secretary noted that farmers and millions of people in Mozambique are suffering from the effects of El Nino and can protect their agriculture from the deleterious effects of climate change through Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) techniques that would ensure food and nutritional security, livelihood security and enhanced community climate resilience.

She noted that EBAFOSA launch was timely and said a climate-proof agriculture sector based on EbA techniques that work with nature and was augmented by linkages to commercial value chains would ensure not only food security and build climate resilience but unlock income opportunities in the agro-value chain.

She noted EBA-driven agriculture has the potential to ensure inclusive and sustainable growth, including creating jobs & incomes in the country if its value chain was holistically optimized.

She also noted that EBAFOSA is the timely policy framework to implement the SDGs and Agenda 2063 in Mozambique and Africa.

On their part, the FAO Country Representative and the WFP country Representative pledged to build synergy and complementarity with UNEP through EBAFOSA by delivering their food security and climate resilience interventions at policy and operational levels through EBAFOSA. WFP Country Representative pledged to deliver their $40 million school feeding programme through EBAFOSA, to ensure impacts beyond emergency relief. The UN Resident Coordinator endorsed EBAFOSA and pledged to support its roll-out. Through this, EBAFOSA is supporting the achievement of the delivery as one UN in countries principle.” I hope this Child called EBAFOSA can grow very fast. We can’t wait”, he said.

EBAFOSA Mozambique becomes the 4^th National branch to be launched.

The launch has provided an opportunity to capitalize on the momentum generated by the interest and heightened awareness on EBAFOSA to mobilize country stakeholders to expedite the stakeholder mobilization and partnership building, critical activities in the EBAFOSA strategy towards actualizing policy and implementation actions for optimizing agro-value chains.

Congratulations EBAFOSA Mozambique!