After years of treating Mozambique as a special case due to its war-torn past, donors are beginning to require accountability from the government — which is not gone unnoticed by the country’s leaders.
A government that will not hear must be made to feel. This is the philosophy behind Mozambique’s donors’ recent decision to not increasing the budget support to the country for 2011. Behind the move lies disappointment over governance, lack of commitment to fight corruption and the exclusion of parties at last year’s elections.
As outgoing chairperson of the donor group — known as the G19 — Finnish ambassador Kari Alanko, put it in a statement earlier this month: ” … the fact that in some areas of governance performance is considered unsatisfactory has caused some [donors] to reduce their pledges in relation to what had been in their long-term plans”.
What that means is that planned increases of budget support — which makes up almost half the Mozambican state budget — have been cancelled. Instead, donors have pledged to continue budget support for 2011 at the same level as this year: a total of $472-million (R3,6-billion). Two donors, Sweden and Switzerland, are reducing contributions because of worries over governance.
The freeze of the pledge for 2011 follows the so-called donor strike earlier this year. Back then a majority of the G19 froze their pledges for 2010 due to disappointment with the ruling Frelimo party’s poor performance on transparent governance, anti-corruption, mixing party and state, fighting conflict of interest and the exclusion of parties at last year’s elections.
Smart move
Fernando Veloso, editor-in-chief of the independent Canal de Moçambique newspaper, regards the donors’ flexing of their muscle as a smart move.
“Stopping the support was a brilliant idea. It showed that there is a limit to how much the donor society will put up with from Frelimo,” said Veloso. “Having absolute power, it is increasingly treating Mozambique as if it were its own business.”
Money constraints were beginning to bite — including government cuts in transport and lunches — when the G19 and the Mozambican government finally came to an agreement in late March. The latter’s negotiator, Planning and Cooperation Minister Aiuba Cuereneia, promised reforms of the electoral system plus new legislation regarding corruption and conflicts of interest.
But Veloso does not have much confidence in his government’s promises.
“A lot of new laws and incentives will be made. But in reality nothing will happen. Mozambican politics is a theatre,” he said, while still praising the fact that budget support from the G19 began to flow after the agreement with the government. “It could have led to unrest if the state would have run out of money and thereby would have not been able to pay its employees.”
Angry government
However, the G19’s show of force did not go unnoticed. In an evaluation of donor performance in Mozambique in May, the government attacked donors by claiming that discussions “often degenerated into mutual accusations” and that relations between the government and donors had “ceased to be a partnership”. Furthermore, the government accused the G19 of a “tendency to take an almost ‘biblical’ approach in the interpretations” of the memorandum of understanding for the budget support.
Despite the tensions, in early June the G19 decided the government’s performance in 2009 was “satisfactory” — this, even though the government missed 21 of 40 targets set for last year.
Notwithstanding the rosy words, Alanko considers what he calls “the recent dialogue on governance” as a reflection that donors expect better performance from Mozambique.
“You would probably not have seen the same kind of action taken five years ago,” says Alanko. “Back then Mozambique was still treated as a special case because of its past with a long civil war that did not end until 1992 and a low level of development and lack of capacity is general.”
But now, he says, “Mozambique has enjoyed almost 20 years of peace and stability, and therefore, we expected a better performance.”
Corruption on the rise
It seems needed. Since 2004 Mozambique has slipped 40 places on Transparency International’s corruption index, placing it at 130 of 182 countries last year. Public jobs and grants are given to Frelimo members while those who dare to side with other political parties are being kicked out.
Still, Mozambique’s economy has been growing between 6% to 8% annually for more than a decade. After several years with more than half of the state budget funded by donor aid, the latter is expected to fall to 45% next year due to Mozambique’s economic progress.
“We see positive measures in attempts to improve the business environment and attract foreign investments. It is a positive trend that will reduce the aid dependency,” says Alanko.
A less aid dependent Mozambique will also be harder to control for the donors, notes Fernando Lima, chairperson of the privately owned MediaCoop Group. He points to other factors that will make donors’ efforts at tightening the leash on the Mozambican government useless.
“Emerging strong economies like Brazil, India and China are supporting Mozambique and investing heavily in the country without requiring any conditions about respect for human rights and democracy,” says Lima.
In addition, comes the outlook of finding oil and other valuable resources in Mozambique. And that, says a diplomatic source, is “a scary perspective which may spoil all attempts at strengthening democracy and good governance in Mozambique”.
Henrik Lomholt Rasmussen is information officer Danish Association for International Cooperation ActionAid Mozambique