The Government of Mozambique (GoM) and the Programme Aid Partners (PAPs) finished the Joint Review of the Government’s implementation of the Action Plan for the Reduction of Absolute Poverty (PARPA) and of the PAPs’ performance in relation to the efficiency of external support. The Review was based on the performance assessment frameworks agreed for 2008, and identified the key lessons which shall be taken into account for the 2009 performance and the 2010 planning and budgeting process.

The 2009 Joint Review (JR) is the last one to be done under the terms of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for 2004-2009. Twenty-nine working groups were involved in the review, distributed over five thematic pillars and the evaluation of the PAPs. The groups were made up of Government representatives, the PAPs, other cooperation partners and civil society, which concluded detailed reviews in their respective areas. In this Aide Memoire (AM) the overall assessment of Government and PAPs’ performance, and the issues deserving special attention are presented in Section II. Section III deals with issues related to the implementation of the joint Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). The detailed assessment of the Government’s performance in 2008 is presented in Section IV. Section V describes the assessment and recommendations concerning the PAPs’ performance.

The Executive Council of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded the third review of the economic performance of Mozambique in the scope of the three-year Policy Support Instrument (PSI). The economic programme between Mozambique and the IMF stayed within the defined limits and all quantitative and structural assessment criteria until the end of June 2008 were achieved. The preliminary data show that the macro-economic policies were also satisfactory in the second half of 2008. All quantitative and structural assessment criteria and structural reference indicators until the end of 2008 appear to have been achieved. The Government achieved its end of year target for Net Domestic Financing due to a favourable collection of domestic revenue. The Bank of Mozambique (BdM) reached and exceeded its end-of-year targets for net reserves and international reserves. Up to the time of writing, the impact of the global financial crisis and its economic effects for Mozambique appear to have been limited, in spite of the continuing significant uncertainties and risks.  Until now, the reviews at macro-economic level have been hampered by poor data quality, and also by the lack of information in Mozambique about the reach and duration of the financial crisis. The next IMF review mission, at the beginning of May, will carry out an in-depth analysis of performance until the end of 2008 and make forecasts for the rest of 2009.

As part of the Joint Meeting and as has been habitual, a meeting was held between the GoM Ministers and the PAPs’ Troika-plus Ambassadors for the discussion of several issues at political level, such as: performance in 2008; plans for the governance area; the mitigation of the effects of the global economic crisis; the business environment; the execution of the Land Law at community level; issues related to the Banco Austral; the plans for the elections and election observation; and the architecture of development cooperation.

This study by OPM focuses on how effectively gender, rights and exclusion are being addressed through the aid instruments, country level dialogue, relationships and decision-making processes through which the Paris Declaration is being implemented.

The purpose of this workshop was to increase mutual knowledge and understanding of how practitioners are applying the Paris Declaration’s overarching principles to advance gender equality, environmental sustainability and human rights. The long-term goal is to demonstrate how attention to these issues enhances development effectiveness.

This series of papers written by women's rights organisations notes that the lack of civil society participation at Paris made it a narrow document and a regressive step in international aid policy. Noting that "there is no aid effectiveness without development effectiveness", the publication calls for a more holistic international aid architecture, recognition of cross-cutting commitments as core development objectives and a reduction of all conditionalities, including 'friendly or positive' conditionalities, which undermine local civil society and social movements. There is also a gender analysis of the AAA, describing it as "progress, but nothing revolutionary".  It notes with approval the new language on gender equality, but criticises the lack of any targets or indicators. It welcomes the deepening of the concept of country ownership, but notes the major challenges involved in introducing participatory decision making in many developing countries.