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Mozambique report wins international accolade
      The Human Development Report for Mozambique 1999, edited and produced by the Maputo Office of the Southern African Research and Documentation Centre (SARDC), is in the top league of national reports in the world as classified by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
      The Mozambique report was ranked among the 10 best reports in the world, which won awards for aspects ranging from quality of content, use of human development measurement tools, design and presentation, impact on policy for-mulation as well as the participatory process that leads to their production. The report was awarded two prizes for excellence in “presentation and design” and “participation and policy impact”.
      The National Human Development Report, produced in Portuguese and English, is a product of a 		partnership between the Mozambique country office of the United Nations Development Programme, Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM) and SARDC.
      The first national human development report on Mozambique was launched in December 1998 under the ti-tle Peace and Economic Growth: Oppor-tunities for Human Development.
      The second report, released in June 2000 is entitled Economic Growth and Human Development: Progress, Obstational human develop-ment report on Mozambique was launched in December 1998 under the ti-tle Peace and Economic Growth: Oppor-tunities for Human Development.
      The second report, released in June 2000 is entitled Economic Growth and Human Development: Progress, Obstacles and Challenges. The major highlight of the report was the quantification of the development imbalances inside 		Mozambique by breaking down the contribution to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of each administrative region and the calculation of the respective Human Development Index (HDI) for comparison purposes.
       UNDP says that more than 260 national reports from 120 countries have been produced in recent years and have become useful tools for heads of states, policy makers, media, civil society organ-isations and researchers in the academia. The 260 reports constituted the entries that contested the awards.
       The prize-giving ceremony was held during the Second Global Forum on Hu-man Development held in Rio de Janei-ro, Brazil in October.
      Mozambique, Burkina Faso and Egypt are the only African countries whose reports won prizes.

Gender equity is a challenge not a threat

 Chissano calls for cooperation in water
The effectiveness of Africa’s development efforts and the ability to sustain them are dependent on the full utilisation of all human resources, regardless of gender. Yet in many countries there is a continued underuti-lisation of women despite the fact that  they constitute more than 50 percent of the population.
       Although women — especially in southern Africa where some govern-ments
have made deliberate empowerment policies — are slowly breaking the barriers that have for a long time hindered their effective participation in the decision-making process, there are still some societies that view gender equity as a threat.
      However, “gender equity is a challenge, not a threat,” as highlighted at a recent conference held in Douala, Cameroon. The conference, organised by the African Caravan for Peace and Solidarity was on “Women’s reality in Africa”.
      The conference theme was explained by Suzanne Kalla Lobe, a Cameroonian journalist. She said, “Gender is a challenge, not just in terms of numbers, but equally and more importantly, the con-tribution this would make to the removal of silent discrimination enabling African women and men to be equal partners in the process of providing development assistance.”
      The conference provided an opportunity for African women to share and discuss gender policies, strategies, mech-anisms, modalities and possible networks throughout Africa. Participants represented governments, NGOs, academic institutions and the media from Cameroon, Gabon, Tunisia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.		 Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano has stressed the need for careful management of southern Africa’s shared river basins, so that both upstream and downstream countries benefit from the water available.
      He was speaking in Maputo at the opening of a two-day international con-ference discussing this year’s catastrophic flooding in southern and central Mozambique.
      The conference brought together ministers with responsibility for water matters from seven SADC member states and a wide range of experts from across the region and the globe.
      Chissano noted that water is a very special commodity, in that “both an excess and a shortage can kill”.
      Since the amount of water reaching Mozambique depends, not only on climatic factors, but also on the use of rivers in the upstream countries, the Mozambican government had, ever since independence, “worked for a healthy and fruitful relationship with our neighbours in the area of water resources”.
      He said that the recently revised SADC protocol on the use of shared watercourses incorporates principles that are “generally accepted as appropriate instruments for balanced management that satisfies the needs of all in a just and equitable manner”.
      Those principles involved “cooperation between states in the balanced use of water resources, taking into consideration mutual interests and the need to guarantee adequate protection for those resources”.
      Such cooperation sought to ensure that the downstream states received sufficient water 		for their needs. For Mozam-ique, where nine of the region’s major rivers flow into the ocean, this was of particular importance, stressed Chissano.
      The protocol should ensure that Mozambique’s geographical position “does not mean that we receive all the discharges in periods of flood, but receive no water in periods of drought be-cause of upstream extraction”.
      Chissano said during the February floods 30,000 square kilometres (or an area almost the size of Holland) had been inundated. Over 700 people had lost their lives, and the economy had suffered a serious blow. (AIM).

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