“The direct participation and the possibility to do my part in the care of the common House is the greatest opportunity that we have. Not only for us, but also for our children and all the people that will choose Nampula as their city”. Those where the first words of Agostinho after a first intervention to remove the waste. This story tells about Agostinho, his passion for the environment and also his worries in seeing his children playing in polluted water. This is the story of Agostinho, his message to the *311# to report the waste close his house, his passion for the environment and also his worries about the side effects of the usage of polluted water. But this is also the story of a Nampula, third Mozambican city, the always increasing people coming from the close provinces and the city daily challenge in managing the solid waste, the shortage of resources and the complex and at the same time fragile context of the city.
Agostinho. In one of the bairro (neighborhood) of Nampula, more precisely in Napipine, lives Agostinho, 43 years old with his family, his lovely wife and his 4 sons. Agostinho is the owner of a small shop, selling food and beverage also with the help of his sons. His big passions and hobby is the farming. Beside his house, he has a small garden where he cultivates vegetables and some fruit to guarantee healthy and fresh food for his family.
Sadly, his house is close by an uncontrolled deposit of waste, where every day huge amount of waste is abandoned. To clear the sidewalk, sometimes the waste is burned creating a dense black smoke that easily invades his house. Beside the smell one of the main problems of that illegal deposit was the water pollution consequent to that abandon of waste, the same water that possibly is used to water the garden and to wash the clothes for the whole neighborhood.
In 2022 Agostinho heard the possibilities introduced by the platform Mopa so he decided to send an SMS to the *311# to the MOPA control room, indicating where the critical point was. After a couple of days, the works to remove the waste and clean the area started. With the introduction of the MOPA platform in the city of Nampula, the monitoring opportunities and the direct participation of the population in the care of the city, Agostinho and other people were and still are able to report the presence of waste on the streets and to monitor the resolution of the report by the side of the Municipaliy. “The system can be surely improved […] but for me and all the people living in Napipine represents the first step to live in a safe and clean environment”. This is what Agostinho expressed about the intervention done.
The project VipMoz introduced the Platform MOPA to increase the innovative and integrated management of the waste in the city of Nampula. Already from the name it is possible to meet the core of this innovative platfotm MOPA: MOnitoria PArticipativa (Participated Monitoring). It was possible to introduce such advance and innovative systems thanks the support of Progettomondo, engaged on environmental issues since many years, ACRA and financially supported by Enabel.
The main hope of the project is to keep strong both at the social level and the institutional level the attention to the environment, allowing the people to be protagonists in their own cities to require the respect their right to live in a safe and healthy place and to increase the quality of their life.
