Good afternoon. The Swedish government’s decision to end direct development aid to Mozambique (see below) has left Mozambican NGOs in shock, but nobody should have been very surprised by it. For one thing, donor countries everywhere are cutting their aid to the developing world, and Mozambique has already seen reductions from the United States, United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Sweden is not the only Nordic country to lose interest in Mozambique: Denmark has closed its embassy in Maputo and it stopped providing aid in 2015. And the centre-right Swedish government elected three years ago could be counted on to be less interested in foreign aid than its predecessors. But also, the Mozambican government has not done itself any favours.
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Fernando Lima
Zitamar News
Sweden has been one of Mozambique’s longest-standing donors, having supported the country since independence in 1975. But the Mozambican government has not rewarded that loyalty. In contrast to how carefully it has accounted for finance from the US or the International Monetary Fund, Mozambican state institutions have been careless in managing aid money from Sweden and in accounting for it. At times funds have been diverted or their use has not been properly explained. Apparently the government did not think there would be consequences.
Nor has the government been very careful in how it explains its human rights record or the recurring problem of election fraud. Ministers have taken the attitude that foreign countries will quickly forget about abuses and then go back to business as usual, but over the years, donors have hit back by reducing funding. The widespread evidence of massive fraud in the latest Mozambican elections held in October would only have encouraged this trend.
