Success begets success for UNCDF in Mozambique

Earning donor support with thriving local initiatives

By Andrea Davis, UNDP Bulletin

When UNCDF went into Mozambique at the ebb of the country’s fifteen-year civil war, it was with the modest ambition of rehabilitating one or two rural roads. Few international development assistance partners were in the country at the time.

The project hummed along unaided for several years, making steady incremental gains as the country recovered from the war. Gradually the UNCDF portfolio expanded its reach with a new project in three districts of Nampula province. Beyond mending roads, the team began to support grass-roots initiatives using participatory rule appraisal techniques – strategies which would allow civilians to weigh in on proposed public improvements in their own communities.

“The infrastructure had been destroyed by the civil war,” says Marco van der Ree, UNCDF’s Programme Manager for Mozambique. “Roads, bore holes, hospitals, schools – everything had to be rebuilt from scratch.”

So by 1998 UNCDF scaled up accordingly, integrating its interventions more fully into local initiatives. As their first major effort in this regard, they provided support to provincial governments in implementing district planning processes for rehabilitation projects. But for the first time, they were able to reach into deeper pockets: those of the Dutch government, which contributed US$4 million.

Since these early days, UNCDF’s work in Mozambique has steadily attracted the attention and support of a growing number of donors eager to bolster their successes on the ground. In addition to earning Dutch assistance, the second phase of the district planning project team’s efforts have garnered significant support from Norway and Switzerland – and are serving as a model for similar, larger-scale initiatives by the World Bank.

“We try to pioneer and innovate, so the big players with the money can then come in and build on what we’ve established,” explains van der Ree.

More than 75 public investment projects have been completed.

The first planning venture in 1998 was designated an official pilot by the Ministry of Planning and Finance. It has been hailed as a major achievement, resulting in the construction of more than 75 public investment projects worth over US$4 million throughout Nampula province. It has also successfully introduced the idea of district consultative councils, biannual assemblies of a wide cross-section of civil society leaders in a given district to monitor government progress on initiatives and enforce accountability. The second phase will now also start addressing issues such as improvements in coordinating joint planning at district and municipal levels, district finances, and local economic development.

Meanwhile, positive buzz continues to circulate among donors about UNCDF’s work in Mozambique. Van der Ree says that donors from Ireland, Sweden and Germany are expressing interest in other initiatives.

Key to the team’s success in the field is its complete integration into local efforts. “We don’t see our work in terms of discrete ‘projects’,” van der Ree says. “Our cars don’t have UNDP or UNCDF stickers on them; we don’t fly the agency flag in any way.” Each initiative is built into the local governance structure from the beginning, and ownership rests with local government. Says van der Ree, “It’s the only way these efforts can be sustainable.”

A district consultative council in session.

Another major component is close linkage between UNCDF and UNDP in the areas of decentralization and public sector support. UNDP has been providing parallel financing since 1998. Members of the UNDP/UNCDF Executive Board were able to observe this synergy for themselves on a recent visit to Mozambique. They came away convinced of the complementarities of the two agencies’ mandates. Subsequently in September 2003 an amendment to the second phase of the project was formulated that will provide additional upstream support with funds from UNDP, Ireland and technical support from UNCDF. This will bring the total project budget of the second phase to almost US$20 million.

“UNCDF is a downstream piloting agency, while UNDP is an upstream advisory organization,” notes one staff member who was involved with the CO visit. “The essence is in understanding how best to leverage our joint impact.”

Mozambique is scheduled to hold general elections at the end of this year, the country’s third since the war ended. Will a decade of UNDP/UNCDF’s decentralization efforts be felt at the polls? Van der Ree says it’s hard to establish a direct correlation.

“In Mozambique, the prevailing development philosophy is ‘gradualismo’ – slow, gradual change,” he says. “As a senior government official once told me, ‘We are not in a hurry – we live here’. Of course we’d be delighted to see quick results in three or four years, but a longer horizon is more realistic.”

Still, he points out that in the context of recent legislation on the local institutions of the State, guidelines on participation have been approved that recognize and uphold the role of the district consultative councils A further sign of progress for the donor community to reward.