About 7200 people, mostly women, have become unemployed after the closure of six cashew processing factories in Nampula province.

At the root of the closure is the lack of raw material, a situation aggravated by the illegal export of raw chestnuts, which, in fact, has been registered since 2018.

Salvador Neves, quoted by VOA, says he worked for 12 years at the cashew nut processing company Condor.

The dismissal messed with his life, as it was his only source of survival and he now depends on "small odd jobs that don't always work out."

Mother of four children, Jacinta Daniel says that the cashew industry was her first job and now she finds herself "desperate.

For his part, the president of the Association of Cashew Industrialists in Nampula, Yonuss Gafur, warns that there are only six factories left in the province, which are also facing a shortage of raw material.

Yonuss added that companies had spoken to the Minister of Agriculture, who was aware of the situation and guaranteed to promote actions to rescue the cashew industry, one of the most important agribusiness sectors in Mozambique.