Maputo — Improved education has led to a surprising jump in Mozambique's human development index (HDI), according to the latest National Human Development Report, released in Maputo on Thursday night.
The HDI is a an instrument developed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to measure progress in human development, defined as "the broadening of people's choices".
The index is a composite measure of the three factors key in allowing people to lead more fulfilling lives - longevity, educational achievement, and a decent standard of living.
Longevity is measured by life expectancy at birth, and standard of living by real GDP per capita measured in US dollars adjusted to parity purchasing power (since a dollar does not buy the same in Mozambique as it does in New York). Educational achievement is broken into two components - the adult literacy rate, and the combined enrolment rate in primary, secondary and tertiary education.
The HDI has a maximum value of one. According to the UNDP's global Human Development Report for 2000, the highest human development in the world was registered in Canada, with an HDI of 0.935. The lowest, of the 174 countries covered, was Sierra Leone, with an HDI of 0.252.
The National Report finds that Mozambique's HDI has steadily increased - from 0.328 in 1997, to 0.338 in 1998, 0.346 in 1999, and a startling jump to 0.362 in 2000, the last year for which full figures are available.
Preliminary estimates indicate a further increase in the HDI, to 0.378, in 2001. The improvement in 2000 is surprising because that was the year of catastrophic flooding in the south and centre of the country, which had a severe impact on economic growth. The economy that year only grew by 1.6 per cent, well below the population growth rate of 2.3 per cent.
The report explains that the rise in Mozambique's HDI is due almost exclusively to a sharp drop in adult illiteracy. The 1997 census found an illiteracy rate of 60.5 per cent, but the survey on basic indicators of well-being (QUIBB), undertaken in 2000, found an illiteracy rate of 56.7 per cent - a reduction in illiteracy of 6.3 per cent in just four years.
This could be regarded as a tribute to the expansion in education since the end of the war of destabilisation in 1992. But sceptics will point out that there is a larger margin of error in the QUIBB figures than in the census ones.
For while the census attempted to interview every household in the country, QUIBB used sampling techniques. The sample consisted of 14,500 households, and while the National Statistics Institute (INE) is highly professional in its methods, there is always the possibility that the sample is not fully representative. Nonetheless, these are the latest figures on literacy that exist.
Less surprising is the rise in the second component of the educational achievement index, the combined enrolment rate. As schools destroyed in the war are reopened, and new ones built, the number of pupils enrolled increases. Thus the combined enrolment rate has risen from just 25 per cent in 1994 to 30.5 per cent in 1998, 32.7 per cent in 1999, and 35.8 per cent in 2000.
Life expectancy at birth is also slowly rising, from 42.9 years in 1998, to 43.5 in 1999, and 44.2 in 2000. These estimates are extrapolations from the 1997 census, and have come under attack in some quarters for failing to take the demographic impact of the AIDS epidemic into account.
But the INE argues that the effects of AIDS are already captured in the birth and death rates shown in the census. There are no reliable statistics on AIDS deaths, though this gap may well be remedied in the Demographic and Health Survey that the INE is planning for next year.
As for real GDP per capita, this too has risen - but by nowhere near as much as in the late 1990s. Expressed in parity purchasing power (PPP) dollars, GDP per capita rose sharply from 755.3 in 1997, to 817.6 in 1998, to 851 in 1999. In 2000, the rise was much smaller, to 864.6. However, substantial economic growth resumed in 2001, and the estimate for GDP per capita for that year is a leap to 1,049.9 PPP dollars.
Does this mean that poverty is on the decline ? Perhaps not - for when broken down by region and by province, the figures show a huge concentration of production (37 per cent) in Maputo city. The other southern provinces account for 14 per cent, the central region for 28 per cent, and the north for 21 per cent.
As the report remarks, "there is an enormous gulf between economic activity in Maputo city and in the rest of the country". The 2000 figures show significant economic growth in only four of the country's 11 provinces - Maputo province (26.5 percent), the western province of Tete (16.6 per cent), Niassa in the far north (6.9 per cent), and Maputo city (5.9 per cent).
The impressive Maputo province figure is due almost exclusively to the MOZAL aluminium smelter at Beluluane, which began production in 2000. It is MOZAL that is responsible for the enormous jump of 182.9 per cent in the value of Mozambique's manufactured production between 1999 and 2000.
Zambezia and Nampula provinces showed slight increases in their GDP (0.8 and 0.5 per cent respectively). Everywhere else there was a decline: Gaza, Manica and Sofala provinces, all badly hit by flooding, saw their GDPs decline by 17.1 per cent, 11.1 per cent and 10.5 per cent. Inhambane and Cabo Delgado provinces both recorded a fall of 1.3 per cent.
So provincial HDIs give a rather different picture from the national one - particularly as the statisticians have been unable to use the purchasing power parity methodology at provincial level.
With GDP per capita expressed in dollars, three provinces see a decline in their HDI - worst off is Zambezia, where the HDI fell from 0.182 in 1999 to 0.168 in 2000. Sofala fell from 0.293 to 0.290, and Cabo Delgado from 0.193 to 0.185.
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All other provinces show a slight improvement, due once more to rising educational levels. Looking solely at real GDP per capita, in 2000 this fell everywhere except Maputo province. The worst fall was in Gaza, from 138 to 93 dollars, certainly the result of the huge floods on the Limpopo. Even Maputo city per capita GDP fell - from 1,221 to 1,068 dollars.
The poorest province remains Zambezia - here per capita GDP fell from 95 to 78 dollars. Maputo province alone went in the other direction with its per capita GDP rising from 168 to 171 dollars.
But a couple of caveats should be added. First, the figures look slightly better when expressed in the Mozambican currency, meticais. And secondly, many of the 2000 GDP losses were reversed in 2001, although the full statistics are not yet available.
However one counts GDP, the most striking aspect of all the figures is the distance between Maputo city and everywhere else. Maputo city per capita GDP is six times higher than the national average, and 12 times higher than the Zambezia figure.
Indeed Zambezia, where about 20 per cent of the Mozambican population lives, is in a class of its own at the bottom of the table. It was the only province where educational achievement fell - the 1997 census found an adult literacy rate of 29.7 per cent, and in 2000 the QUIBB survey found this had dropped still further, to 25.3 per cent.
