11 March 2008
Beira — Mozambican President Armando Guebuza on Monday launched, in the central city of Beira, a Masters degree course on "Planning and Regional Development focused on the districts".
This course, to be offered by the Economics Faculty of the Beira delegation of the privately owned Mozambique Catholic University (UCM) will take two years, and will initially accept 20 students.
On the occasion, Guebuza said that this course has the potential to strengthen the districts' local planning and management capacity, as part of the government's decentralization programme.
He stressed that the challenge posed to both lecturers and students at the UCM and other Mozambican universities is to continue making a difference in the development of the districts and the entire country.
"We hope that, in the case of UCM, the course that is now starting will increase, not only the number of graduates but particularly national capacity in terms of planning and management of the development process in our districts. The target is to provide the districts with a critical mass of professionals with scientific knowledge and enough skills to lead the process of transforming raw materials into products for internal consumption and for export", said Guebuza.
He recalled that the decision to make the district the pole of development was taken because over 68 per cent of the people live in rural areas and because of the available resources there, such as land and water for agricultural and livestock production and a range of mineral resources, which the people living there can transform into wealth.
"Another reason to give priority to the districts is that we anticipate a multiplier effect from the attention paid to these administrative units", added Guebuza. "Experience shows us that cities depend on the countryside in terms of a variety of consumer goods, which means that when production and productivity rise in the rural areas, the supply of these goods for urban areas increases, leading to lower prices to the consumer", he said.
For his part, the catholic archbishop of Beira, Jaime Goncalves, said that the launching of this course represents a contribution of the UCM to the challenge to eradicate absolute poverty, which particularly affects the most remote rural areas.
He stressed that the idea behind this course is to make Mozambique a land of equal opportunities for all Mozambicans.
"This is the UCM's contribution to the government's programme to make the district a pole for development", said Goncalves, adding that a district-based development programme requires many investments, both in financial terms and in human resources.
He added that the launching of this course shows that UCM wants to take part in the designing of guidelines to lead Mozambican society to higher levels of sustainable development.
The course is open for honours degree graduates in Economics and Management, and other areas such as Geography, Geology, Statistics, Medicine, Computer Science, Agriculture and Environment Sciences.
The course demands full time participation for 24 months, since it is essential that the students acquire theoretical and integrated analytical skills to study socio-economic problems, emergencies and environmental challenges.
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