Red tape, archaic laws and corruption are seen as major threats to Mozambique's reform agenda, which has won the country stable economic growth and acclaim from international lenders, analysts said on Monday, reports Reuters. Analysts say a growth average of 8 percent annually over the past decade has yet to deliver a solution for poverty, and further reforms and investment were required to bolster this southern African country of 18 million people.

President Armando Guebuza made what AIM called "his strongest criticisms yet of corruption, sloth and ineffectiveness within the country's judicial system, which was effectively denying the rights for which the liberation struggle had been fought", in a speech to senior legal figures on 5 November. To turn the system around, Guebuza said, "we cannot continue tolerating indifference and apathy in our administration of justice, using the pretext that a huge amount of work has accumulated - when we know perfectly well that the greatest problem is the spirit of 'don't bother' - expressed in the lack of timely orders to undertake specific actions, or, if they are ordered, failure to check that they are carried out".

This event is organised by CODESRIA, the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa. Selected topics to be explored include: mobilising citizen participation in the development process; engendering African development; culture, tradition and custom in African development; social policies for sustained African economic development; trade and industrial policies for sustained development in Africa; and the media in the development process.

The Kruger National Park is concerned plans to enlarge the Massingir dam in Mozambique will destroy one of the world's largest breeding grounds for the Nile Crocodile. The higher dam wall and newly installed sluice gates would cause sediment to back up into the 8km-long Crocodile Gorge, said spokesperson for the Kruger National Park, Raymond Travers. The gorge is in the park and, while it is not generally accessible to tourists, it is the world's largest breeding ground for the Nile Crocodile, he said.

An expanding network of community radios is strengthening civil society and supporting community development and social change in Mozambique. The increase from one community radio station in 1994 to nearly fifty in 2005 means that more than a third of the population now lives within reach of a station. Regular, sustainable, impact assessments are essential if these stations are to be effective.

The Southern African Counter-Trafficking Assistance Programme (SACTAP) of the International Organization For Migration has launched a set of radio public service announcements to raise awareness about human trafficking in Mozambique. Mozambique was identified in the IOM's 2003 report Seduction, Sale and Slavery: Trafficking in Women and Children for Sexual Exploitation in Southern Africa, as one of the key source countries for women and children trafficked to South Africa.

Mozambique's President Armando Guebuza began a three-day official visit to the nation's former ruler Portugal on Monday, November 7 which will focus on drawn-out talks to give Maputo a controlling stake in the giant Cahora Bassa hydroelectric dam. "We feel there are signs of a willingness to find a solution to the problem as quickly as possible," he said after holding talks with his Portuguese counterpart Jorge Sampaio.

In central Mozambique it didn't rain for four years. The landscape in the drought-affected southern half of Mozambique is pocked with water holes; when one hole dries up, the villagers move on to another. People are malnourished, and due to unsafe water many people are suffering from cholera, says Sonia dos Anglos Faustino, a coordinator with the Mozambique Red Cross. Water holes are often shared with livestock, increasing the chances of contracting water-borne diseases. Piped water and even functioning water pumps are rare in the countryside, due to the civil war that ended in 1992.

The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) and the Open Society Justice Initiative (the Justice Initiative) are pleased to invite applications for the Human Rights Fellows Program for the 2006-2008 session. The deadline for applications is November 21, 2005. This program was launched in 2003 by the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) and the Open Society Justice Initiative, in collaboration with Conectas Human Rights, the Open Society Foundation (South Africa) and South African, Mozambican and Angolan Civic organizations.

Cashew nuts are one of the world's most valuable processed nuts. Mozambique, once the world's largest producer, works with communities and the private sector to raise output. However, trade liberalisation, falling prices, new quality requirements and the buyer-driven nature of the cashew-nut supply chain are worsening working conditions. Women play a central role in the production and use of cashew nuts. Collaborative research from the UK International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) explores the gender dimensions of liberalisation on the Mozambican cashew industry.

The surprise axing of the head of Mozambique's Anti-Corruption Unit, Isabel Rupia, has been sharply criticised by human rights groups as undermining the government's anti-graft message. "We need to know the reason why Isabel Rupia was removed - it is people's right to know. When they don't know, then it leads to speculation," said Carimo Abdul of the anti-corruption NGO, Etica Mozambique. Government officials were unavailable for comment. Rupia's agency was wound up last week and replaced by a new Central Office for Combating Corruption (GCCC). But while that move was expected - the unit was a stopgap measure - her removal was not. Rupia's assistant, Rafael Sebastião, has been made chief of the GCCC.

Hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people in Mozambique will go hungry unless the international community provides urgent funding for aid programmes, the World Food Programme (WFP) has warned. "We urgently need US $19 million to keep essential feeding programmes going for 430,000 people in Mozambique, but we need the assistance now," WFP's Regional Director for Southern Africa, Mike Sackett, said in a statement.

At least five people were killed and 16 others injured in Mozambique after supporters of the ruling Frelimo party and the main opposition Renamo clashed over disputed municipal elections, state radio said on Tuesday. The clashes in Mocimboa da Praia on Sunday and Monday followed May elections in the area won by Frelimo, Radio Mozambique said.

A national immunisation campaign targeting almost 9 million children has kicked off in Mozambique. The campaign aims to vaccinate children aged between nine months and 14 years against measles; children under five years of age will be vaccinated against polio; children aged six to 59 months will receive vitamin A supplements.

Mozambique has finally put together a draft Freedom of Information Bill, which media experts hope will pave the way towards greater transparency and government accountability. After five years of broad consultations, an agreement on the content of the proposed law was finally reached at a recently held media seminar in the capital, Maputo.

With an HIV prevalence of over 12 percent, Mozambique is one of many African countries grappling with the challenge of supplying treatment to citizens who risk succumbing to AIDS-related diseases. A proposal to build the country's first-ever factory for manufacturing generic anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) may provide some hope in this respect, however. Brazil is assisting Mozambique with the initiative.

While accounts of illegal logging in southeast Asia's and central Africa's tropical forests, to supply the booming Chinese economy are increasingly common, this report is one of the first to document the "Chinese takeaway" from the semi-arid forests of Southern Africa. A four-months study of forestry in Zambezia province of Mozambique was conducted between November 2003 and October 2004. It found Chinese traders, local business people, and members of the Government and forest services are colluding to strip precious tropical hardwoods from these slow-growing forests at a rate that will exhaust the resource in 5-10 years.

Wednesday 6th of July 2005
Friday 8th of July 2005
Eight of the most predominant organisations will go to G8 embassies to present their demands to the G8 ambassadors.
Contact Silvestre Baessa on +258 824921000. [email protected]

Save the Children, a leading U.S. and international child-focused relief and development agency seeks an Education Specialist for the Combating Exploitive Child Labor through Education project. It is a $3 million, four year project with the purpose of improving access to and quality of education programs for children in Mozambique as a means to combat exploitive child labor in areas with high incidences, particularly with children involved in domestic work, agriculture, as traders and hawkers and for commercial sexual exploitation.

The Mozambican government launched on Tuesday a literacy programme by radio to benefit initially about 20,000 people in Maputo, Manica and Cabo Delgado provinces, respectively in the south, centre and north of the country. The radio programme, that involves 45 lessons and takes three months, as well as the production of manuals for the teachers and the students, was first experimented with in Manhica.