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Mozambican Civil Society Within: Evaluation, Challenges, Opportunities and Action
1.2 Project Approach and Methodology
1.2.1 Main Reasoning Behind the Research
The fundamental question that the CSI project sought to answer can be expressed as follows:
What is the state and condition of Mozambican civil society?
For a correct answer to this question a systematic, comprehensive and sufficiently operational
methodology had to be found that fitted local Mozambican conditions for conducting and
implementing research.
In one way or another, for better or worse, in recent years individual researchers and collective
public and private entities have carried out studies on specific aspects of Mozambican civil
society. However there had never been an attempt to apply a multi-dimensional, systematically
integrated methodology with a wide range of research techniques and data sources.
This is where CIVICUS provides an operational and participatory research model for evaluating
the state of Mozambican civil society through an analytical and methodological model built
around four basic dimensions of the civil society universe: the structure of civil society; the
external environment in which civil society exists and functions; the values practiced and
promoted in the civil society arena; and the impact of the activities pursued by civil society
actors.
Based on scattered research and common sense, everyone has some idea of the current
state of Mozambican society, its relevance, actions, capacity to negotiate with other actors in
society, and the effectiveness of its intervention.
In general, each person’s ideas about the state of Mozambican civil society is heavily dependent
on his or her expectations about the role that it can, should or could play in the development of
society. People with low expectations about the role of civil organizations in the development of
society tend to be complacent in their assessment of Mozambican civil society. On the other
hand, people with great expectations and hopes about the role civil society can or should play
in the daily life of society, express feelings of greater or lesser frustration at the current state of
Mozambican society.
However, one way of compensating for the indifference and complacency of some or trying to
respond better to the more demanding and rigorous expectations of others, is to gather as
much realistic, updated, reliable and precise information as possible.
Once the real state and condition of civil society is known it is much easier to search for
realistic and justified responses to the main obstacles and weaknesses faced by organisations
and activists in Mozambican civil society. This is not an easy challenge. But it is a challenge
worth tackling so that efforts can be more focused and the result of actions more satisfactory.
In this context the empirical data produced by the CSI project through a systematic,
comprehensive and participatory methodology provide the first holistic database on Mozambican
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Civil Society Index, Mozambique 2007