Last update: January 15, 2025

This page contains information about some of the data available in the FEWS NET Data Explorer (FDE) for Mozambique. This is not a comprehensive guide.

For information about using the filters and fields for specific domains in the FDE, see Choose a Data Domain.

Summary table

Country food security context

Statistical reporting units

Mozambique usually uses administrative units as their statistical reporting units.

• Admin 1: There are ten admin 1 provincias in Mozambique and one Cidade capital, Maputo City.

• Admin 2: Distritos. Most provincias contain 9-18 distritos.

• Admin 3: Postos administrativos or localidades (localities).

A fourth type of administrative structure, outside of the hierarchy described above, the municipio, primarily concerns approximately 65 of the larger cities and towns in the country.

The FDW contains relationship tables which define four annual sets of boundaries (Admin 0-2 for 1990, 2013, 2016 and 2021) for Mozambique. Each describes the temporal and hierarchical relationships of statistical reporting units at a specific point of time. Taken together, they describe a genealogy of changes in Mozambican statistical reporting units between 1990 and the present.

Crop Data

Explore our crop data.

View our documentation on using the Crop Domain.

Mozambique crop data available in the FDW cover a period running from 1999 to 2023.

Crop estimate data sources

There is no central database of crop statistics for Mozambique, nor for most other domain data of interest for food security purposes. Most annual statistics are, and have been, published in annual reports over the years. It also appears that in some years, no annual reports have been published for these datasets.

The Ministerio da Agricultura e Desenvolvimiento Rural website is the most likely site where crop statistics for the country may be found. Under the main menu choice Estatisticas, the Inquerito Agrario Integrado is the most likely publication series containing annual crop statistics.

A second location where crop statistics and information about the country’s agriculture may be found is at the web site of the Instituto Nacional de la Estatistica (INE).

Year and season definition

The annual agricultural year runs between September 1 and August 31 of the next year and is frequently described with a two-year notation. The year is often referred to by the second of the two years (end-aligned).

There are two primary agricultural seasons:

• Primera epoca: September to March of the next year

• Segunda epoca: March to end of August

Occasionally, separate growing seasons for rice and cotton seasons are given:

• Rice: November to May

• Cotton: January to end of August

Primary crops

Principal crops include:

• Food crops: maize, rice, sorghum, and millet

• Commercial crops: tea, cotton, sugarcane, coconut, macadamia, and sesame

Production systems

Annual crop statistics are often broken out by at least two different production systems (PS):

• Small and medium producers

• Large producers (generally commercially-oriented farming operations)

Small producers constitute more than 98.3% of the country’s farming entities, while medium comprise about 1.7%, and commercial are only .03% of the total.

Crop statistics context

Source document entries in the FDW crop data records often include sets of Alt_ data. Alt (alternative) data generally duplicates other data points in the dataset, while also offering some unique insight not available from the default data. It should only be used if and when it answers a specific user’s questions better than the default dataset.

The Alt series in the Mozambique crop data provides a breakout of crop statistics by both: a) small and medium producers, and b) large-scale producers. As it is not consistently available for each year, it has a smaller-range of potential uses for analysis, and is therefore indicated as Alt data.

Crop statistics methodology

A full description of the methodology used in the recent 2023 crop survey carried out by the Ministério da Agricultura e Desenvolvimento Rural may be found in pages 15-29 of the report published following that assessment.