The Financial Times reports on how Portuguese people are fleeing their homeland in search of economic opportunities in Mozambique. The paper estimates that there are 20,000 Portuguese people in Maputo with the number of people registering at the Portuguese consulate up by 10 per cent in recent years.

The country’s Ministry for Coordination of Environmental Affairs (MICOA), has canceled 146 investment projects in various economic activities because they failed to meet the requirements of the country’s environmental laws. The canceled proposals include the activities of some major Western firms. Permanent Secretary Samuel Xirinda told journalists that the 146 projects canceled because of environmental legislation strictures constituted a third of the 437 projects audited by the government in 2011.

At the same time that we increasingly see the advance of new technologies which facilitate communication and information, such as smartphones, tablets, Twitter and Facebook, in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, the People's Wall has emerged: an extensive outer wall of the newspaper Jornal@Verdade, where the population can write letters and direct reflections to the governing leaders. It is an original form of communication, whose effectiveness and accessibility are inherent in its very simplicity. In a way, it acts as an authentic offline Facebook wall.

At least 77 people in southeastern Africa have been killed and more are still missing as Tropical Cyclone Irina sweeps through the region. The storm struck northern Madagascar more than two weeks ago and has slowly tracked down the west of the country. Torrential rain from the system hit the whole of the island, leading to the deaths of 65 people, weather officials said on Monday. The majority of the deaths occurred in the southeastern district of Ifanadiana. The storm has also affected southern areas of Mozambique and eastern South Africa.

Mozambique’s Finance Minister plans this year to increase State revenues in order to overcome the growing lack of funding from abroad, Minister Manuel Chang said. 'With that increase in revenue the aim is to establish conditions needed to reduce the budget deficit, increasing the contribution of domestic resources within the State Budget,' the Finance Minister said at the 19th National Public Spending Seminar.

On 14 February, police pre-emptively dispersed a planned demonstration in central Maputo by the Forum of Mozambican Demobilised Soldiers. The police response and lack of progress in negotiations between the demobilised fighters and the government is likely to drive further protests in Maputo in the next weeks, says Think Africa Press. There are over 13,000 demobilised fighters in Mozambique. While former combatants of the anti-colonial struggle have received pensions, demobilised fighters from the 1975-1992 civil war have not received the same benefits. The civil war soldiers demand equality of status and a monthly pension of $460.

Over 100,000 people in Mozambique are still recovering from losing their homes and crops, and from being cut off from schools and shops after a tropical storm and cyclone hit the southern African country in January. But the worst may not be over as another dangerous cyclone is expected to make landfall as emergency stocks run low.

Following the cyclone and floods that ravaged Quelimane town and its outskirts, health officials have raised concern over the possibilities of cholera, malaria and diarrhoeal outbreak. Tropical Cyclone Funso swept across the coastal areas of Zambezia province leaving trail of destruction to property and crops. Thousands of people were left homeless among them elderly, child-headed families and the sick. For the local health authorities in Quelimane, it is the destruction of water and sanitation facilities and puddles of water scattered around the affected communities which are of major concern.

The local authorities in Namacurra in Zambezia Province, Mozambique are appealing for urgent humanitarian assistance following the tropical cyclone Funso which hit the coastal areas of the province in the districts of Nicoadala, Pebane, Maganja da Costa, Namacurra, Quelimane and Chinde last month. Pedro Fazenda Sapange, the administrator for Namacurra district Red Cross, said that the slow response may lead to starvation and disease outbreaks. 'There is a serious need for food assistance, as most families lost their crops to the cyclone and floods. So far we have seen people prematurely harvesting their cassava which they normally harvest in June and July.'

Australian and Brazilian mining giants are moving villagers to land insufficient for farming and far from jobs to make way for coal projects in central Mozambique, and then sidelining local entrepreneurs as they exploit the region's natural resources, according to a new report. The independent Southern Africa Resource Watch, which monitors the impact of mining across the region, sent researchers to study resettlement efforts by Rio Tinto of Australia and Vale of Brazil, which recently began mining in Mozambique's Tete province. Southern Africa Resource Watch said 'the impact of both companies' investment on local communities remains problematic and there is no guarantee that these massive coal extraction projects are going to genuinely benefit the people of Mozambique.'

Mozambique granted concessions to investors for more than 2.5 million hectares (ha) of land between 2004 and the end of 2009, says the Oakland Institute's country report on Mozambique, which forms part of a multi-country study on understanding land investment deals in Africa. 'Mozambique’s history of Portuguese colonialism, three wars, and then the imposition by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund of a harsh neo-liberal economic model led the government in the 1990s to accept the idea that the only way to promote development and end poverty was through encouraging foreign investment. Mozambique was identified by the World Bank as one of five sparsely populated African countries with large tracts of land available for rainfed cultivation. After 2000 rising food and fuel prices and new climate change-related attention on forests triggered the interest of investors in Mozambique, particularly for trees (for paper, timber and carbon credits) and agrofuels (notably sugar and jatropha).'

About 40 people have died and more than 100,000 are affected by twin storms that struck Mozambique 18-26 January, according to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Tropical Cyclone Funso struck northern Mozambique, 'affecting about 64,663 people and causing floods and damage of houses, schools and health centres. In southern Mozambique, high river flows from upstream countries… combined with heavy rainfall due to tropical storm Dando, affected about 51,670 people,' it said on 27 January.

The flood waters of the Incomati river and its tributaries swept across Mozambique's main north-south highway cutting off Maputo from the north and centre of the country, it was reported on Monday. Earlier, disaster relief officials said storms had forced tens of thousands of people from their homes and had killed 22 in Mozambique, the Associated Press (AP) reported.

Families resettled by Brazilian mining giant Vale in the Tete region of Mozambique have protested that the company had failed to keep promises it made to them in 2009. About 700 families, resettled approximately 60 kilometres away from the Moatize coal mining site, demonstrated against the lack of access to water, electricity and agricultural land at their resettlement Cateme area.

Alexandre Manguele, the southeastern country's health minister, announced that the first ARVs produced in Mozambique, in partnership with Brazil, will be ready by July 2012. In doing so, it will be the first African country – rather than private sector supplier – to produce its own stocks of the drug, which can prolong the lives of HIV sufferers by decades.

Recent municipal elections in Mozambique show that the ruling party in Mozambique, Frelimo, may not be as strong as it would like to think. Luca Bussoti reports that low voter turnout and an impressive showing by the opposition suggest all is not well for Frelimo.

Mozambique's dependence on foreign aid is declining, Finance Minister Manuel Chang told the country's parliament, the Assembly of the Republic. Introducing the state budget for 2012, Chang said that only 39.6 per cent of public expenditure will be covered by foreign grants and loans, with 60.4 per cent of the budget met by domestic resources. In the 2011 budget, 44.6 per cent of expenditure was to be covered by foreign aid, and in the 2010 budget the figure was 51.4 per cent.

Mozambique is the most corrupt country in southern Africa, with 68 per cent of people having paid a bribe in the past year, according to a survey by Transparency International and Gallup. More than a third of those using health services or education had to pay a bribe.

The latest edition of the Mozambique Political Process Bulletin has articles on corruption in Mozambique, the inability of coal mines to reduce poverty, the need for more jobs in Mozambique and much more. Visit the web address provided to subscribe to the Mozambique Political Process Bulletin and Joseph Hanlon's Mozambique News Reports and Clippings.

Civil society in Mozambique has been actively engaging among themselves, with the state, and with investors to improve large scale land transfer governance. The initiatives underway range from: a land forum that brings together the various stakeholders to discuss land governance issues; community land delimitation initiatives by the Rural Mutual Support Organisation (ORAM); more extreme actions where communities have uprooted investors’ eucalyptus plantations and successfully renegotiated the return of their subsistence production land from an investor.