[Mozambique] Foreign Aid Cannot Replace Mozambican Work

From All Africa

Foreign aid to Mozambique can never replace the work done by Mozambicans themselves, President Armando Guebuza warned on Wednesday.

In his State of the Nation address to the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, Guebuza noted that this year's drought has affected over 800,000 people, who have been obliged to wage "a titanic struggle to lessen the impact of this disaster on their families and their communities".

He placed the response to the drought within the broader context of the fight against poverty, which he described as a "new epic of liberation".

"The friendly hand of international solidarity", Guebuza said, "should be seen as complementing, and not as replacing our own efforts to see Mozambique free of poverty".

This conviction, he stressed, had driven his government's approach ever since it took office in February. "We want Mozambicans to put themselves in the front line of this struggle", he said. "That way, our international cooperation partners, and all those who wish Mozambique and its people well, will feel more encouraged to support us, when they see that we are completely committed to the battle against poverty".

Guebuza added that, during his tour of the provinces earlier in the year, he had found "worrying situations", some of which were rooted in red tape, corruption, crime, and the spirit of apathy and drift in the public administration.

Others, however, "result from poor use of the resources that surround communities, and a failure to take a pro-active attitude in response to natural disasters".

The government had worked to eliminate unnecessary red tape and to simplify procedures, notably through the "one stop shops", where citizens can obtain all the documents they need for authorisations or licences in the same place, without a paper chase through offices scattered across an entire provincial capital.

But such innovations were just part of the changes necessary: Guebuza also stressed the human side, in the need for civil servants to act as "facilitators".

The President also expressed serious concern at the continued spread of AIDS despite massive prevention campaigns.

The last figures on the epidemic, from epidemiological surveillance undertaken in 2004, indicated that 16.2 per cent of the population aged between 15 and 49 was HIV-positive - or one in six adult Mozambicans.

Guebuza said that a better strategy is needed in order to contain the epidemic. Methods were required that, within Mozambican cultural practices, would prove more effective in getting across "our message that AIDS kills and that there is no cure".