A Decade of Support to Local Planning and Financing in Mozambique

Mozambique's Laboratory of Democracy celebrates 10 years in Nampula Province

By Chiara Pace/UNCDF

06 March 2006 — Poverty reduction is the fundamental condition for the promotion of human, economic and social development, both in rural and in urban areas. Mozambique’s human development index still remains one of the lowest in the world - 168 out of 177, leaving the majority of people in rural areas in absolute poverty.

With a twofold effort of accelerating rural development and increasing initiatives to fight absolute poverty, the Government of Mozambique recognized the district as the main actor for planning the economic, social and cultural development of the country; with the support of the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), it concretized this principle creating the Decentralized Planning and Financing Programme (PPFD – Programa de Planificação e Finanças Descentralizadas”), through which it drives its actions for the capacity building of the local institutions. The programme, an initiative of the Ministries of State Administration and Planning & Finance, started as a pilot project in the northern province of Nampula in 1996 and through a rapid expansion is now covering 8 of the 11 provinces of Mozambique. It is currently funded with 15.5 million USD for the provinces of Cabo Delgado, Nampula and Maputo with contributions offered by UNCDF, UNDP, the Government of Mozambique, the Royal Government of the Netherlands, the Royal Government of Norway, the Swiss and Irish Cooperation for Development.

On 27 February 2006 the Government of Mozambique and its partners commemorated 10 years of the Decentralized Planning and Financing Programme in Nampula with a celebration in the district of Mecubúri recounting the numerous achievements of PPFD in the province. The ceremony, chaired by the Governor of Nampula and Minister of Environment, was welcomed by 300 people from government, international organizations, civil society and citizens of the district as one of the first that benefited from the programme implementation and achieved its main goal of reducing absolute poverty through the improvement of local governance.

The concrete results that the different components of PPFD Nampula model achieved during these 10 years were fully outlined during the celebrations through a comprehensive exhibition and a visit to the district planning and finance office. These outcomes made the programme a brilliant and innovative example of decentralization - a successful laboratory of democracy where citizens become proactive and real actors of their district's development through participation in decision-making processes and improvement of living conditions. For this reason the Government of Mozambique adopted PPFD's methodology into its development agenda and is now replicating it in 25 northern districts, in addition to the other 13 in the centre with the support of the World Bank and in 10 in the south with the assistance of GTZ-DCI. This expansion is a clear sign that Nampula's experience has been fully welcomed by other donors and international organizations.

When PPFD started in Nampula, the province, as well as the rest of the country, suffered from the effects of a fifteen-year civil war. Beside a destroyed economic situation and a weak social tissue, the province of Nampula faced scarcity of resources and a level of poverty around 89.4%. Today Nampula is one of top provinces which registered strong reductions in the levels of poverty, above the national average, with a poverty incidence around 52.6%.

From the outset, the UNCDF has been a crucial partner for the Government of Mozambique in implementing the Decentralized Planning and Financing Programme, contributing in Nampula for the achievement of basic services and the improvement of development processes. Over the past years, beside 16 new health centers, 18 schools, 173 new water sources, the rehabilitation of 25 roads and many other new infrastructure works, UNCDF was instrumental for the adoption of practices and tools that strengthened people's participation in decision-making processes. Fully recognizing its central role for the significant progress in a number of key areas of human and social development throughout the Decentralized Planning and Financing Programme, the Government of Mozambique gave UNCDF representatives a Diploma of Honor acknowledging its strong commitment in establishing a model of Laboratory of Democracy.

UNCDF invests in Least Developed Countries through a variety of innovative approaches in both local development and microfinance. For more information on UNCDF programmes in Mozambique, please visit the UNCDF Mozambique home page.