The impact of the epidemic on the economy has not yet been duly quantified in Mozambique. But preliminary estimates indicate that the aggregate value of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) could be 8-10% lower than the level it would have attained had the epidemic not occurred. This affects another important HDI component, income, in a country which, despite the improved performance in recent years, has one of the lowest per capita GDPs in the world.

Estimating the impact of the epidemic on the economy is also based on examples from other countries which faced HIV/AIDS earlier. For instance, it is estimated that the epidemic cost Namibia about 8% of its GNP in 1996. GDP growth in South Africa is forecast to be, on average, 0.3 to 0.4 percentage points below what it would have reached in a scenario without HIV/AIDS during the next decade (Quatteck, 2000). In Kenya, it is estimated that by 2005 the GNP will be 14.5% smaller than if there had been no AIDS (ONAP, 1999).

Overall economic growth has fallen drastically not only in countries with high levels of intensive use of labour in exporting industries (such as Swaziland, Tanzania and Kenya), but also in countries that are highly capital intensive in their exporting industries. Botswana is an eloquent example of this phenomenon.

The diversion of resources to finance medical care, together with the expenditure on combating opportunist infections in HIV-positive people, as well as r educed opportunities for access to education, as we shall see below, and to other social ser vices means that a large proportion of Mozambican households will see their survival opportunities shrink as a result of the epidemic, weakening still further their human development.

As the effects of the epidemic grow, so the ability of households to send their children to school will diminish, at the same time as the capacity of the education sector to carry out its task fully will also be severely affected.

Access to education, which is already very precarious in Mozambique, will be substantially affected. The availability of specialist teachers will decline sharply in a system where the available staff are already insufficient to cope with the needs. It is estimated that there are 43,156 teachers in the country - 38,279 in the two levels of primary education, 2,457 in the two levels of secondary education, 998 in elementary, basic and mid-level technical education, and 1,422 in higher education. These teachers are catering for an estimated school population of 2,360,798 pupils and students (INE, 1999).

Few countries have undertaken studies into the impact of HIV/AIDS on the education sector . As far as is known, Mozambique is the third country in southern Africa to take the initiative of making a detailed assessment of the impact of HIV/AIDS on the education system. The other two are Swaziland and South Africa. Mozambique's effort expresses the seriousness with which the authorities are taking the impact of the epidemic on the sector. The following section intends to offer an initial, preliminary, and far from exhaustive, approach to the possible impact of the epidemic on the Mozambican education sector.