Mozambique

MOZAMBIQUE IS A sub-Saharan African nation located in southeast Africa. It has a lengthy coastline on the Indian Ocean and the Mozambique Channel, which separates the country from Malagasay (Madagascar). It is bordered in other directions by Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Swaziland. Despite its coastal location, the extensive Zambezi River, and other natural resources, Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in the world. Per capita annual income in 2003 was estimated to be $210, while child mortality was 101 per 1,000 live and the incidence of AIDS was 13 percent.

Vasco da Gama's voyage from Portugal to India brought Mozambique into the European sphere of influence for the first time. A Portuguese base was established there, and over the succeeding centuries Mozambique was first exploited as a producer of slaves who were exported by traders across the Americas and the Arab world. Subsequently the Portuguese colonizers created an export-based industry in which goods were extracted from the country for sale overseas to the benefit of Portuguese settlers. The people of Mozambique were denied access to economic or social opportunities and were used as conscript labor to build the transportation infrastructure.

Colonization was not ended until 1975 and was then succeeded by a bloody civil war (1980–92) among factions of differing ideological beliefs. This war impoverished even further the population, particularly those [Page 735]away from the coast, who relied mainly on subsistence agriculture for income.

Approximately 70 percent of the population live in rural areas, the agriculture of which accounts for 30 percent of Gross Domestic Product. Per capita income declined to a low in 1995, when it fell to $140. World Bank assistance has been sought since membership in 1984 and currently approximately $1 billion of development aid has been committed to the country. This includes projects concerned with public-sector reform, education, transportation infrastructure management, capacity building, and a regional gas project.

The government's Action Plan to Reduce Absolute Poverty noted the country's continued extreme vulnerability to external shocks such as flooding and low international commodity prices for its agricultural exports. It laid out a strategy for poverty reduction based on the central vision of peace and sociopolitical stability and specified priority areas in education, health, agriculture and rural development, basic infrastructure, good governance, and macroeconomic financial management.

In 1998, Mozambique was declared to be eligible to join the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative, which provided some $1.4 billion in debt relief. The purpose of the HIPC initiative is to reduce national debts to sustainable levels so that ongoing structural adjustment reform programs will not be endangered. However, critics observe that it is to a significant extent these programs, which are administered according to a standard template by the International Monetary Fund without consideration of local conditions, that are in fact causing the economic problems. While Mozambique is also eligible to benefit from the debt write-off announced at the G-8 Gleneagles Summit in 2005, the need for trade reform and the end of export subsidies in the developed nations was not met.

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