On 28 May, the Government of Flanders approved the fourth Country Strategy Paper for development cooperation with Mozambique. This Strategy Paper, developed in cooperation with the Mozambican Government, provides a new scope and perspective for this cooperation over the next five years (2021-2025). It is also builds on a survey undertaken on broader Flemish civil society as well as an evaluation of the implementation of the previous Country Strategy Paper (2016-2020).

Flanders and Mozambique will continue to focus on the health sector with increased emphasis on developing a stronger and more efficient health system, both at the central and provincial level. With Flanders’ support, this system will also be adapted to deal with the current pandemic and attempt prevention and control of possible future health.

Flanders also continues to focus on improving access to sexual and reproductive health care but will now extend the previous focus on mainly female adolescents to additional vulnerable groups, including people with physical and/or mental disabilities, people with HIV and AIDS, members of sexual and/or gender minorities and internally displaced persons. In order to be able to reach these groups, service provision will need to be adapted and health personnel provided with additional training. At the same time, overall quality of care must be strengthened.

Finally, Flanders also continues to focus on the national promotion of a health policy based on scientific evidence. The aim is to enable the Mozambican government to use the scarce financial and human resources as effectively as possible in order to maximise health gain. A further objective is to counter popular beliefs in certain harmful traditional practices as well as prejudices against important applications of modern medicine, such as vaccinations.