In a country where hunger and unemployment remain daily challenges, schools cannot limit themselves to delivering theoretical content. In Mozambique, there is an urgent need to rethink the role of education in communities, not merely as a means of literacy but as a practical tool for survival, development and independence.
The country has vast fertile lands and a climate that allows several harvests a year, yet thousands of families still face food insecurity. The question that arises is: why do we not teach children to produce food from an early age? Schools, especially at primary and secondary level, could and should be the first place where children come into contact with the land, with agricultural production and with environmental awareness. In community schools, creating school vegetable gardens should be a compulsory and continuous practice. More than an exercise in farming, it would be a lesson for life. Children would learn about the cycle of nature, the value of collective work and respect for the land. At the same time, they could contribute to school meals, reducing costs and strengthening child nutrition. School horticulture could be an interdisciplinary subject, linking biology, mathematics, environmental education and even citizenship. It would be a way of uniting theoretical and practical knowledge, preparing young people who are aware and able to transform their own realities.
Back to basics: technical education from an early age
In our parents’ day, technical education was part of the basic curriculum. Schools taught sewing, carpentry, metalwork, gardening and other manual skills that prepared young people for life. Today, many students finish secondary school without even knowing how to produce what they consume or mend what they use. Technical subjects need to be reintroduced into the national curriculum, from the earliest levels, so that new generations do not depend solely on the formal market but can create their own opportunities. If the country’s problem is hunger, we must learn to produce food; if the problem is unemployment, we must teach from an early age how to create jobs.
Learning to create solutions
Educating is not just teaching reading and writing; it is teaching how to solve problems. Mozambique’s future depends on the ability of its children and young people to be creators, producers and innovators. Schools could become genuine laboratories of community development, where new forms of agriculture, recycling, crafts and social entrepreneurship are tried out. In a context of poverty and scarce resources, hope lies in creativity. Mozambican education needs to cultivate that creativity from an early age, encouraging critical thinking and working with one’s hands. A child who learns to plant, sew, build and mend grows up with the sense that they are capable of producing value and making an impact in their surroundings. Public education policies must look at communities with a practical and sustainable vision. A school should reflect the reality in which it is set, responding to local needs. A rural school, for example, can be a space for agricultural experimentation; an urban school, a training centre for trades, innovation and waste management.
It is not enough to prepare pupils for exams. We need to prepare citizens for life. Teaching must shape young people who know how to think and act, who can feed themselves from what they produce and live off what they know how to do.
A new outlook on the future
Rethinking teaching is, above all, rethinking Mozambique’s future. The country has a young, vibrant generation full of potential, but one that needs practical tools to turn that potential into progress. Teaching people to produce is teaching them to live with dignity. Teaching them to create is teaching them to dream. The road to a developed Mozambique starts in the communities, and the starting point may lie in the hands of a child who proudly learns to plant their first lettuce in the school yard.
