ATI

COUNTRY PROFILE

Mozambique

Mozambique is a low-income country in Southern Africa. Decades of civil war have held back its economic development, and as a result it is a low economic transformer. Its overall ATI score declined from 21.1 in 2012 to 15 in 2020. Productivity increases have consistently declined, Technology upgrading has stalled, and Human well-being remains low.
CAPITAL CITY

Maputo

POPULATION (2022)

33 million

POPULATION GROWTH (2022)

2.7 %

GDP GROWTH (2022)

4.1 %

GDP PER CAPITA (2022)

US $541

Mozambique’s Performance on the African Transformation Index

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The overall African Transformation Index score measures the five dimensions of DEPTH.

Overall score

13 /100

Score change
-3.8

since 2000

At a glance
  • Mozambique is a low economic transformer with an overall ATI score of 13.
  • It falls substantially below the overall African average of 30.3 and performs worse than average across all DEPTH dimensions.
  • Human well-being, Export competitiveness, and Productivity have remained low since 2000, while its two highest-performing dimensions, Diversification and Technology upgrading, have declined precipitously over the same period.
Score
/100
Change since 2000
Diversification
25.4
-14.7
Export competitiveness
5.4
+3.4
Productivity increases
2.2
+1.1
Technology upgrading
19.2
-9.4
Human well-being
13
+0.7

Diversification of production and exports measures countries’ capability to produce and export a widening array of goods and services.

Score

25.4 /100

Score change
-14.7

since 2000

At a glance
  • Mozambique’s economy used to be as diversified as the African average, but in recent years it has become one of the continent’s weakest performers.
  • Production and export diversification has been on the wane since 2012, with the economy increasingly dominated by a few natural resource-based megaprojects.
  • The manufacturing sector remains small, and its share in GDP has fallen from 16 percent in the 2000s to 9 percent in 2020.
  • Services remain the largest sector of the economy; however, the sector’s share of the total value added has also declined, from 54 percent in 2000 to 46 percent in 2020.
 
 
 

Export competitiveness is measured as the ratio of a country’s share in the world’s exports of non-extractive goods and services to its share in world non-extractive GDP.

Score

5.4 /100

Score change
+3.4

since 2000

At a glance
  • Despite minor progress, Mozambique remains part of the large group of African countries that rate poorly.
  • Its Export competitiveness score trended upward between 2001 and 2013 before tumbling as a result of the country’s increased reliance on large extractive projects and its limited integration into the global value chain of its non-extractive exports.
  • Mozambique’s five top exports (raw aluminum, coal, electricity, raw tobacco, and petroleum gas) declined as a total share from 80.7 percent in 2007 to 68.1 percent in 2020.

Productivity increases measure the value added per unit of labor in agriculture, manufacturing, and services.

Score

2.2 /100

Score change
+1.1

since 2000

At a glance
  • Mozambique is among the least productive countries in Africa, failing to record any significant progress in this area.
  • The country’s Productivity increases score of 2.2 is the worst of all the DEPTH dimensions.
  • While labor productivity has improved slightly in services and agriculture between 2000 and 2020, manufacturing productivity has declined drastically during the same period.
  • Informal small- and micro-sized enterprises with low-productivity technology now dominate manufacturing.

Technology upgrading measures the medium-and high-technology content in total production activities and total commodity exports.

Score

19.2 /100

Score change
-9.4

since 2000

At a glance
  • After gaining momentum between 2003 and 2013, progress on Technology upgrading stalled, dropping Mozambique behind most of its peers.
  • Mozambique has implemented strategies to give local companies better access to new technology and production organization methods through Special Economic Zones and technology learning, but the benefits have not yet been realized.

Human well-being measures economic and social outcomes and enablers in terms of incomes, income inequality, formal employment, and female participation in formal labor markets.

Score

13.0 /100

Score change
+0.7

since 2000

At a glance
  • Mozambique’s per capita income almost doubled between 2000 and 2020, but these gains have had a limited impact on overall economic well-being.
  • Income inequality increased rapidly after 2007, with large income gaps between rural and urban areas and between female- and male-led households.
  • Broad-based intervention policies have improved the proportion of formal employment in the labor force from 11.6 percent in 2000 to 17.6 percent in 2020.
  • However, only 6.9 percent of women are formally employed.

Discover more from the ATI

ATI Scorecard

Explore the data behind the economic transformation progress of 30 African countries between 2000-2020.

Growth with DEPTH

Explore the ATI in DEPTH and see how African countries performed on each dimension between 2000-2020.

Methodology

Learn more about our methodology, sources, and how we calculate the index.

Country Profiles

To explore the results of the index in greater detail and provide context and analysis, the ATI report includes 11 case studies.

Downloads

Our Research & Analysis on Mozambique
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