There are indications that the sustenta project is not as functional as has been rumored and that, even so, its beneficiaries belong to the Frelimo party. As the newspaper writes EvidenceCiting a report by the Observatory of the Rural Environment (OMR), "SUSTENTA is not functional because it does not respond to the current challenges of agriculture in the country."

On the other hand, the same project benefits around 90% of alleged farmers affiliated to the Frelimo party, so that the distribution of benefits serves to buy their loyalty. This information, which will be included in the report, corroborates with a June 2021 study by the Center for Public Integrity (CIP) - seen today by MZNews - which reveals a tendency to select members associated with the ruling party to benefit from the project, says the newspaper.

The main obstacles to the success of the project are poor mechanization, due to the lack of experience of the operators, and the low productivity of the seeds made available.

In addition, "the process of selecting producers is a very strong component, since it is not based on experience, but on institutional or party political alignments, conditioning the sustainability of the project itself", according to OMR researcher Nelson Capaina, quoted by the newspaper. "Small producers who were not integrated into the program were not from Frelimo," it reads.

Despite this, and the risk that the Sustenta program poses because it is mostly funded by donors, it has the merit of fostering the emergence of a group of producers.