Hours after Mozambique's government announced renewed subsidies to quell deadly food riots, street vendor Nortencia Manica was still angry about the cost of life in the southern African country.

"This doesn't help," the 33-year-old mother-of-three said, sitting on a curb in the capital Maputo. "I live in misery."

"I earn 100 meticals ($3) here, sometimes 50 meticals a day, but what am I going to do?" she said. "We on the street need work too."

The subsidies aim to calm the public outrage over high prices that erupted on 1 September into three days of rioting that left 13 dead.

Any political gain from the decision doesn't change the economic reality that Mozambique simply can't afford to subsidise food, water and electricity indefinitely, analysts said.

"It does not solve any problems, but the measures are essentially to calm people," said economist Antonio Francisco.

About 90 percent of Mozambicans live on less than two dollars a day, according to the World Bank, even though the economy is one of Africa's fast-growing - partly because it was starting from an extremely low base after the end of a 16-year civil war in 1992.

So when the government unveiled an overnight increase in bread prices, on top of jumps in water, electricity and fuel costs, the burden became unbearable.

Despite declaring price hikes "irreversible" at the height of the unrest, five days later government rolled back many of the higher costs.

That leaves Mozambique with a renewed headache of paying for the subsidies, whose cost has not been revealed.

"The economy does not have the capacity to subsidise more things," said Francisco.

The government had already scaled back on fuel subsidies, said Standard Chartered Bank economist Victor Lopes, amid reports that the annual budget for the scheme had been overrun by February.

"This kind of measure is always in the very short term. There is a very big push from many governments to decrease their subsidies," Lopes said.

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have also criticised the subsidies for benefiting only the middle class and not the poor, he added.

Over the long-term, the country needs to tackle its 60 percent unemployment rate and ramp up agriculture - which collapsed during the civil war - to produce its own staple food, analysts said.

Mozambique depends on South Africa for about half of its imports, and the value of the local metical has fallen by about half against the rand over the last year, making many products hugely expensive locally.

"Agriculture has been booming, but obviously it has not been enough because Mozambique still depends on wheat imports," said Lopes.

Now the government must decide whether to tackle the reforms needed, analysts said.

"I suspect there is a resistance to serious reforms," said Francisco. "I think many leaders are insensitive about their role, about their responsibility toward the management of public funds."

At the same time, Mozambique has opened up its economy over the last decade to attract foreign aid and direct foreign investment, said Lopes.

"If you look across the continent, Mozambique is probably one of the countries that have adopted the greater amount of reforms, I would say."

If Mozambique fails to get a grip on its problems, Francisco warned new protests could flare up.

"These demonstrations will continue because nothing substantially changes," he said.