Poverty in Mozambique
1. Problem.
Poverty is a significant barrier for sustainable human development in many African countries. For the case of Mozambique, this problem is even more persistent, since globally it is observed against its impressive economic growth rates and encouraging development progress made by the government in recent years. During the last decade, country’s GDP growth rate demonstrated significant stability, with on average more than 7% annual increase since 2011 (IHS Economics and Country Risk, 2015). This economic miracle was possible due to the vast natural resources of the country being unexploited, which attracted attention of foreign investors. However, these investments did not have any positive impact over poverty reduction, which kept persistent in rural areas representing 70% of country’s population.
A survey published by Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (2015) reported 69,6% of poor people based on 2011 data analysis through multidimensional poverty index, which in general has not changed till nowadays (IHS Economics and Country Risk, 2015). Apart from human development, this negative trend paralyzes agricultural production and labor productivity, and thus requires more objective analysis.
2. Analysis
Arndt et al. (2012) identified agricultural performance, weather patterns, and fluctuations in global food and fuel prices as potential drivers for the poverty stagnation in Mozambique. Agricultural reason has received the majority of attention in other researches as well (Cunguara & Hanlon, 2012; Fox & Sohnesen, 2013). Originally, poverty could be considered as an outcome of the long-lasting wars, high frequency of natural disasters like floods and droughts, and the prevalence of HIV/AIDS virus, with about 10% of nationwide population living with it (IHS Economics and Country Risk, 2015). Today, when the inflow of external capital increased, the reasons for this problems keeping persistent raise many questions, which ultimately point out poor government strategy in addressing poverty and corruption. Thus, it is reasonable to consider reasons other than war and weather, especially under the circumstances of evident economic growth.
First, it is important to consider the structural characteristics of the country, which in Mozambique case consists of two distinct development zones – urbanized south and mostly rural north and central zones. Agricultural production was focused in rural parts mostly, and thus was exported through northern ports of the country, while the southern part has been mostly focused over urbanization progress, thus leaving fewer incentives to connect north and south with trade routes (Cunguara & Hanlon, 2012). As a consequence of global increase for food and fuel prices, northern households lost confidence in amounts of products their produce to gain a high enough price to cover their costs, even having assets and favorable conditions to do that. On the other hand, deficient southern provinces were forced to devote scarce resources to staple food production to ensure their livelihoods, as they were not sure of having an opportunity to buy products for a favorable price (Cunguara & Hanlon, 2012).
Thus, northern provinces became isolated from …
