Child Poverty in Mozambique. A Situation and Trend ... - Unicef

their development and impact on the rest of their lives (in terms of growth, mental
impairment, ill health or other lifetime effects of childhood poverty). The current
generation of children in poverty cannot wait for the longer term benefits of new aid
modalities, increased government ownership and capacity to be realised.
The Government and development assistance partners are addressing this challenge
in several ways that have direct positive impacts in addressing childhood poverty
in Mozambique. Firstly, PARPA II identifies that certain types of interventions
are particularly suited to “project type” funding modalities, enabling government
to absorb offers of large amounts of external funding and reap the benefits for
development, without undermining the basic principles of aid effectiveness (see Box
2.6).
Box 2.6: Scaling-up of aid and child-development
There is a clear role for external financing of specific one-off programmes that
deliver a rapid “step-change” in development outcomes. PARPA II explicitly
recognises the key role such programmes can play, proposing that the potential
increases in aid flows resulting from the scaling-up of external assistance in the
coming years should be used for specific investments that require significant
resources to initiate but that can be sustained by fewer resources in later years
or that stimulate the productive sector of the national economy (GoM 2006; p44).
Such programmes often have strong direct benefits for children’s lives. Examples
include a comprehensive scaling-up of efforts to eradicate malaria in Mozambique,
vaccination programmes, birth registration campaigns, or the recently initiated
Millennium Challenge Account programme to provide access to clean water in
smaller towns and cities in the north of the country. In such cases, ensuring the
long-term sustainability of interventions through the simultaneous development of
Government institutional capacity will be crucial.
Secondly, development partners have already made substantial shifts towards
financing Government through “Common Funds”, i.e. mechanisms through which
a number of donors coordinate in providing funding to a specific sector or area of
activity within a sector. In the education sector, a common fund provides finance
through which the sector can purchase and distribute text books free of charge of all
primary students. In the health sector, essential drugs are funded through a common
fund, with the sector responsible for purchasing, distribution and monitoring of costs
and use.
Thirdly, various sectors are innovating with regard to how they implement their
activities, by adopting new mechanisms for contracting non-government service
providers. The accelerated school construction programme is one such example, as is
“outsourcing” by competitive tender.
CHILDHOOD POVERTY IN MOZAMBIQUE: A SITUATION AND TRENDS ANALYSIS
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