Agricultural experts, who talk about the risk in growing banana plantations, should be interested in the situation in Monapo, Mozambique. The banana plantation, supported by the financial group, Norfund, that was supposed to be a model for foreign investment in that country has gone burst.
But it is not the first failure for Norfund. The financial institution which belongs to the Norwegian government is funded from the aid budget, and has encountered failures in Mozambique.
Matanuska Plantation started in 2008, and at its peak had 2500 workers and was exporting 1400 tons of bananas a day. However, in 2013 the plantation was found to have Panama disease, which had not been seen ealier in Africa before and devastated the bananas. Over the next few years it will probably spread across Mozambique.
The head of plant pathology at Mozambique’s Ministry of Agriculture, Antonia Vaz. says the disease could destroy the banana industry in Mozambique in just a decade and it could spread to the rest of Africa.
Finally in 2014, Norfund threw in the towel. It used to be an important investor in microcredit banks about a decade ago, when the urban middle class joined the trend of buying household goods. Now, most of them have closed because they could not make any development impact.
Real estate provides the platform for Norfund’s main investments in Mozambique. But the institution has to work extra hard to compete with money launderers and global commercial investment funds. Financial analysts say this is not the ideal area in which to invest aid funds.
