Achieving accelerated broad-based, inclusive GDP growth will be key for Mozambique’s ambitions for long-term prosperity, sustainability, security and social inclusion, and to achieve its SDGs. This ambition is reflected in its 2023-2042 National Development Strategy (ENDE), which seeks to achieve an average annual GDP per capita growth of 8% throughout its implementation.

Broad-based economic growth will be critical in ensuring improved livelihoods in agriculture in rural areas, which still employs 73.6% of the country’s workforce, and where poverty levels are greatest. It will also be key in generating quality jobs in the services, tourism and manufacturing sectors that provide employment opportunities for Mozambique’s youth, while helping restore the government fiscal balances and increase the fiscal space for public investments in infrastructure and social sectors.

To achieve accelerated growth, Mozambique needs to increase productivity levels, especially in the agricultural sector, including in subsistence farming activities. It also needs to continue with the implementation of policies and measures that contribute to an enabling business environment. 

In pursuing this development path, Mozambique needs to be mindful of the negative side effects that are often associated with strategies for accelerated, inclusive, broad-based GDP growth, especially in terms of its environmental and health impacts. In this respect, it will need to complement its pro-growth policies with interventions that ensure the sustainable management and conservation of its rich natural resource base and the adoption and use of clean and environmentally friendly production practices.

Mozambique is considered the fifth country most affected by extreme weather events between 2000 and 2019. It is also one of the most vulnerable (135 of 182 countries) and least ready (171 of 192) according to the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative (2020) programme. 

Recent estimates put the cost of climate change in Mozambique at up to $16 billion to 2050, potentially lowering GDP by close to 4%. In 2020, up to 35.5% of households in Mozambique reported having suffered losses in food, assets and incomes due to the impact of natural hazards during the previous 12 months, with this percentage increasing to 43.4% of in rural areas.

Against this background, in a context in which climate change-related extreme weather events are expected to increase in Mozambique, it will be critical to step up prevention, mitigation and adaptation interventions that strengthen the resilience of human settlements and cities across the countries. Such interventions will be critical in enabling Mozambique to attain its SDGs and its ambitions for prosperity, inclusiveness and sustainability, as recognized in Mozambique’s 2023-2042 National Development Strategy.

Having effective, accountable and transparent institutions is a critical ingredient for sustainable development, ensuring effective service delivery to the population and sound and inclusive effective sustainable development policy management.  

As recognized in the 2023-2042 Mozambique National Development Strategy, Mozambique’s governance indicators have deteriorated over the past two decades. Of particular concern is the deterioration in government effectiveness, with worsening perceptions over the quality of public services, reduced capacities in the state administration, limited independence from political pressures and the low quality of policy formulation. 

In addition, corruption indicators have deteriorated, constituting a major current problem for the country, due to its negative effects on the growth rate, the level and quality of investment and on the allocation of external resources.

To address these issues, Mozambique is intending to introduce measures to modernize and promote the efficiency, effectiveness, transparency and integrity of the public administration, including the justice system and law and order agencies, through the professionalization and improved management of public services and the active combat of corruption. It is also planning to consolidate decentralization reforms and to promote participatory processes in local decision-making.