The Mozambican government believes that it is on track for meeting one of the key targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), that of halving the percentage of people living on less than a dollar a day.

The government is optimistic that, at the current rate of poverty reduction, the number of people living below the poverty line will fall from the 2003 figure of 54.1 per cent to 45 per cent in 2009, and to 40 per cent by 2015. This will meet the MDG target assuming that in 1990 80 per cent of the population were living below the poverty line. Due to the war of destabilisation there are no accurate figures for that year – the first reliable figure is from the household survey of the mid-1990s, which put the number of people below the poverty line in 1997 at 67 per cent.

The government admits that there are serious challenges to be faced, especially in the area of nutrition. The generic title of the first MDG is “Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger” - but current statistics show alarming levels of child malnutrition. The number of children suffering from insufficient growth, as measured by their weight, fell from 23.7 per cent in 2003 to 20.5 per cent in 2006. But this is still well above the “acceptable” level of 16 per cent, and the target of 17 per cent that the government has set for 2015.

Worse, the level of “moderate and severe acute malnutrition” among children under five years old rose over the same period from 4.1 per cent to 4.5 per cent. “Moderate and severe chronic malnutrition” in the same age group rose from 41 per cent in 2003 to 46.2 per cent in 2006. (Chronic malnutrition generally results from poor food intake over a long period, resulting in stunting. Acute malnutrition is a medical emergency, with a severe loss of weight and the threat of death from starvation).

Progress has been made in the MDGs concerning child mortality. The MDG target is to reduce mortality among under fives by two thirds by 2015. This looks achievable, although once again there is no figure for the base year of 1990. The government’s figures show that mortality among under fives fell from 147 per 1,000 live births in 1997 to 105 in 2006, a decline of 29 per cent.

For maternal mortality, the MDG target is to reduce the rate by three quarters by 2015. Yet the number of women who die from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth remains unacceptably high – 214 per 100,000 live births in 2005, and 253 per 100,000 live births in 2006.

On HIV/AIDS, the MDGs call for halting, and beginning to reverse the spread of the disease. The good news here is that HIV prevalence among adults aged between 15 and 49 seems to have stabilized at around 16 per cent. But the government warns that AIDS remains “one of the greatest threats to Mozambique’s development”.

The government reported an increase in the distribution of condoms with 4.3 million distributed in the first half of 2008, compared with 2.8 million in the first six months of 2007.

As for the anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs that prolong the lives of HIV-positive people, the target for this year is to reach 132,280 people undergoing ARV therapy. By the end of June 74.5 per cent of this figure had been achieved. Meeting the target means putting another 5,600 people a month on ARVs in the second half of the year.

As for paediatric ARV treatment, the target is for 10,582 children to receive ARVs by the end of the year. By the end of June 67 per cent of the target had been met.

In the fight against malaria, about three million mosquito nets treated with long lasting insecticide were distributed in the first quarter of the year – which still comes nowhere near meeting the target of at least two nets per household.

The key environmental MDG is to reduce by half, again by 2015, the percentage of people without sustainable access to clean drinking water. Substantial investments in water supply mean that this goal looks feasible. The government’s figures show that the percentage of rural dwellers with access to clean water rose from 36.5 per cent in 2001 to 48.5 per cent in 2007. Surprisingly, the coverage in urban areas is only 40 per cent.

In the first half of 2008, 20 new wells were built, 230 new boreholes were drilled, and 131 water sources were rehabilitated. This was 25.4 per cent of the government’s target of 1,500 new and rehabilitated sources for the year.

Progress in the cities was faster than expected. There were 23,721 new connections to the water system (the target was of 12,086), and 474 public standpipes were installed rather than the 150 planned.

In education, the Millennium Goal is that, by 2015, every boy and girl can complete primary education. Mozambique’s net attendance rate in first level primary education (EP1 – covering grades one to five) rose from 44 per cent in 1997 to 100.2 per cent this year (rates of over 100 per cent are possible, because many children older than the theoretical primary school age are attending).

For all of primary education (up to grade seven), the attendance rate rose from 94.1 per cent in 2007 to 99.2 per cent in 2008.

The figures are impressive, but lower than the government’s targets. Thus there are slightly more than 4.1 million children in EP1, but the government target for 2008 was 4.3 million. The growth rate in EP2 (grades six and even) was 14.4 per cent, a sharp rise for a single year, but the government had hoped for a rise of over 25 per cent.

The major blockage is that there are not enough schools teaching EP2 – 2,210 in the entire country, so that many children graduating from EP1 cannot find a place in EP2.

To achieve the MDG education target, the government stresses, will require more attention to the conclusion of primary education, and improved quality of education. AIM