The year 2020 was atypical globally, marked by the Covid-19 pandemic that erupted in 2019 in China, but spread and gained strength the following year, putting all the countries of the world in deep economic and social crisis. In Mozambique, in addition to the Covid-19, last year was marked by the intensification of the war in Cabo Delgado, which had been going on for three years, but it was in 2020 that it reached large proportions, generating more than half a million displaced persons and a humanitarian crisis of which there is no memory since the end of the civil war in 1992. In this context Mozambique’s economy contracted by 1.09% in annual terms in the third quarter of 2020, a figure 2.3 percent lower than in the same period of 2019.
The year of 2021 will certainly be marked by these events that go back to 2020. But it will certainly be a different year from last year. What, then, can be expected from 2021? Through this paper, the Center for Public Integrity aims to help understand the current context and the governance challenges expected in the year that has just begun, focusing on the traditional areas of CIP work, namely Extractive Industry, Public Finance, Public Private Partnerships (PPP), with a special focus on Infrastructure, Public Procurement and Anti-Corruption, Control Institutions and Regulatory Framework. Covid-19, the war in Cabo Delgado, hidden debts and endemic corruption in public administration are cross-cutting issues that will affect all sectors of governance in 2021, and are therefore at the center of the analysis.
