By Jose Tembe
BBC News, Mozambique
A group of prisoners sing happily as they tend to vegetable patches on a prison farm 80km (50 miles) from Mozambique’s capital, Maputo.
They are part of project launched by the government to get inmates to grow their own food.
“Some of the vegetables we are growing are being sold locally to help pay our transport and hospital expenses”
Prisoner Sergio Matsinhe
At present the southern African country’s prison population is more than 15,000 and most are being kept in overcrowded cells with little or no sanitation.
So it is no surprise that a chance to work in the open air is welcomed.
“The idea is very good and positive,” says Sergio Matsinhe, who is serving a three-year sentence for stealing money.
“The more we produce, the better we’ll be able to vary and improve our diet. At the moment it consists mainly of beans, rice or stiff porridge,” he says.
The Tinonganine Prison farm is a 100-hectare plot where the prisoners are growing potatoes, pumpkins, lettuces and other vegetables.
“What’s more - some of the vegetables we are growing, like cabbages, are being sold locally to help pay our transport and hospital expenses,” says Matsinhe.
Fellow inmate Daniel Muchate, who is serving a three-year jail sentence for burglary, also gives the project the thumbs-up.
“The idea to farm the land is a good one, because when you think of it, it’s better for a prisoner to be out on the land producing food than sitting in a cell all day,” he says.
“It’s a really great opportunity for us. We feel privileged.”
Escape
But the government does not just have the prisoners’ welfare on its mind.
“Our budget doesn’t support the feeding of these persons in a good manner”
Justice Minister Benvinda Levy
Justice Minister Benvinda Levy says the country could not afford to feed the large number of inmates in jail.
“Our budget doesn’t support the feeding of these persons in a good manner,” she says.
“Many of them stay in prison for long periods just sitting - they don’t do anything, but this is not their fault, it is our fault.”
Is she not afraid the prisoners might escape
"We have to take some measures to avoid this - because it could happen, but the prisons that have been involved, most of them have completed half or two-thirds of their sentence so they don’t want to run away.
“If they did, they would lose all the rights that they have now. This is the reason that we’re confident on this project.”
Prison deaths
Mozambican prison conditions have been criticised by human rights organisations for a long time.
They have documented cases of appalling sanitation and overcrowding.
In 2004, for instance, about 80 inmates who were crammed into a cell in a jail in the northern province of Nampula died of asphyxiation.
And earlier this year 15 more men suffered the same fate in another prison.
Ms Levy accepts that there has been a problem.
"When you are sentenced you just lose your liberty, but you don’t lose other rights, you have the right to be fed and you have the right to work.
“So this project reminds us that the prisoners are still human beings and they’re still with all their rights.”
Broadly speaking, the government’s decision to get prisoners into agriculture has been welcomed.
The scheme is being rolled out, starting with prisons around the capital and the neighbouring province of Gaza.
Many hope it signals the beginning of a positive action to tackle the many problems facing the country’s prisons.