Mozambique proves aid works

It is rare to hear any success stories from Africa. Mozambique should be a typical African basket-case. But in a continent with so many countries on their knees, this one offers hope - and perhaps inspiration to the G8 leaders meeting in Gleneagles.

Economic growth has averaged 8 per cent a year for the past 11 years, one of the fastest rates in the world. Fuelled by two rounds of debt relief - the latest, just last month, was reckoned to be worth US$57 million ($83.4 million) - growth is set to accelerate further.

The streets of Maputo, the capital, once a byword for decay, are beginning to fill again with tourists. One side of a high-rise building carries a giant portrait of the great middle-distance runner Maria Mutola; Mozambique's only Olympic gold medallist is advertising mobile phones.

Relics of the country's lurch into socialism after independence from Portugal in 1975 are still around Maputo. Its streets, named after forgotten Portuguese administrators, now commemorate Communist icons such as Marx, Lenin, Mao and Allende.

But the Government has embraced free-market reforms with fervour.

More than 1000 state enterprises have been privatised, the currency, the metica, has been allowed to float, prices and interest rates are determined by the market, and private investors are showing increasing interest, helping to stimulate the country's nascent stock exchange.

All this still requires considerable outside support. Foreign aid accounts for 15 per cent of GDP and half of all government spending. But income per head is still less than $1 a day, and more than half of Mozambique's 19 million population live in poverty.

But five years ago, both figures were much worse, and the gains so far have bred a new confidence, reflected among young Mozambicans, such as 12-year-old Madina, president of a "youth parliament" organised by Save the Children in the town of Morrumbala, and Luis, 17, the secretary.

"I want to be a doctor and help my country," Madina said. "In this town we value education, because we know that it is the only way to escape poverty."

Luis plans to study economics. "We want the same things as people our age in other countries, and we believe if we work hard we can get them."

 

They are too young to remember the desperate years that followed the abrupt Portuguese pullout in 1975. The Frelimo independence movement, which had taken over a country almost devoid of infrastructure or administrative capacity, found itself in the middle of a civil war.

The struggle against the Renamo resistance - financed, armed and trained by the apartheid regime in South Africa - destroyed what was left of the economy after the disastrous ministrations of Soviet and East German advisers, and caused famine in much of the country.

Maputo became a giant slum, its population doubled to two million by peasants fleeing the fighting in the countryside. The coast road north, lined with restaurants which used to serve Mozambique's celebrated giant prawns with vinho verde and Laurentina beer, was cut off by a roadblock a few hundred yards from town. Landmines were scattered indiscriminately, still posing a danger, and Mozambique sank into poverty.

In 1988, Richard Lander stayed in the Polana Hotel, the capital's most famous landmark, built in the same era as the Mount Nelson in Cape Town and Raffles in Singapore.

Lander, now general manager of the Polana under its new owner, the Aga Khan, said, "Sewage was dripping through the ceiling. All you could get for breakfast was fruit. If you wanted an egg, you had to give someone the money the previous night, so that he could go and buy you one in the market."

Now, in a project which could stand as a symbol of Mozambique's fresh start, Lander is about to supervise a US$25 million ($36.6 million) refit of the hotel aimed at reviving the grandeur of 1922, the year it opened.

But it will take the rest of Maputo, and Mozambique, some time to catch up.

The Frelimo Government finally renounced socialism in 1990, and the civil war staggered to a halt two years later, followed by multi-party elections in 1994 in which Renamo was defeated. Its leader, Afonso Dhlakama, lost again in December to the new Frelimo President, Armando Guebuza, who succeeded Joaquim Chissano after 18 years in office.

Guebuza, a businessman, has a reputation for decisiveness: he was known as "24-20" at independence for giving Portuguese settlers 24 hours to get out, with 20kg of baggage each.

He also "cleaned up" Maputo by rounding up street dwellers, petty criminals and prostitutes and dumping them in the countryside to learn agriculture.

But the capital remains dingy, and dotted with embarrassments, including the concrete shells of a hotel and coastal development abandoned by the Portuguese in 1975 and never completed.

Mozambique's efforts to pick itself up have been set back by natural disasters such as the floods in 2000 and 2001, then a drought which has only recently abated.

The country should be earning substantial amounts from transit trade with its landlocked neighbours, but economic collapses in Zimbabwe and Malawi have been setbacks.

Mozambique's recovery remains fragile. It still faces problems, not least Aids, which might induce despair in a less optimistic people.

But political change in its powerful neighbour, South Africa, allied to a decade of peace and sensible policies at home, have brought the country back from the brink, demonstrating that the cause of Africa is not hopeless.

- INDEPENDENT