Learning log 3 – reflection on systemic approach to a field trip to Mozambique – country/government level
Autor: Nicholas B. Torretta | Publicado: 2012-03-18T10:57:00-07:00









For the last two weeks I was in a field trip to
Mozambique for a CS course in the school of economics; therefore, my reflection
for the learning log 3 and 4 will be related to the research made in the trip and
its relations to the System Thinking approach. 



Briefly contextualization about Mozambique:



Mozambique is located on the southeast coast of
Africa, facing the Indic Ocean, in front of Madagascar Island. A country with
tropical weather, full of very welcoming and sympathetic people, fruits,
colors, birds, sea food and underdevelopment. While many of these
characteristics came from natural causes, underdevelopment has a strong reason,
far away from natural causes.



Mozambique is an ex-colony of Portugal, as many
other countries, such as Brazil (where I’m from); However this country’s
independence from Portugal happened recently, in 1975, after a 10 years’ war. Furthermore,
just after the independence, the country entered in a socialist Government
which was followed by around 20 years of civil war. The country found peace
just in 1992 and democracy in 1995.



Nevertheless, the problem was not the model of
government (socialism, capitalism or anything else), the problem was the lack
of awareness of the consequence that modifications in a system would cause to
the others; that is what I describe on the following topic:



But why is that a cause of underdevelopment? 



During the colonial era Portugal had made, even
though not much, some investments on infrastructure and services; but after the
independence, the new Government decided that they should be the ones in charge
of all the production and services (health, education, water &amp; sanitation,
agriculture, fishing, etc); for that, they incorporated all the private facilities
(clinics, hospitals, schools, boats, harbors and so on) under their
administration. Yes, if you was a doctor and had a clinic, you would no longer
have it (neither your equipment); which resulted in a big exodus of people to
other countries such as South Africa and Portugal. 



Besides that, if the country had some
infrastructure, the government couldn’t take care of everything and, even further,
the civil war contributed to leave everything in bad conditions. 



When democracy came in 1995 the country started
from zero again, trying to rebuild and restructure everything for the third
time. That is the main reason of underdevelopment: it is a new country (we
could say that it is only 20 years old in the development path). However,
another reason for underdevelopment is: how to overcome poverty and lack of
infrastructure?



This has a more systemic reason than the above
mentioned history: the government is still in charge of many services; but
focusing on agriculture, which was one of the main areas of our research there,
what we found is: There is no “private” land in Mozambique. You can’t own a
piece of land, they are all owned by the Government. On one hand it is a good
thing because there are no “land less” people; if you want a land to have a
farm or to live on, you just need to fill a paper asking for the right of usage
of that specific place you chose; however, on the other hand, as the country
lacks infrastructure and investments, if you want to lend some money from a
bank (there are only private banks for agriculture) to invest on machinery and
other equipment to start your production, you do not have anything to present
as guarantee; therefore you can’t lend money. For that reason, economic development
of Mozambican society goes in a slow pace. 



If we analyze the situation, there are two
feasible solutions if we consider the relation between the agricultural
production, the governmental and the bank systems. One is for the government to
give ownership of the land to the citizens so that they can start doing things
by their own, and stop their dependence on the governmental initiatives; and
another would be either the creation of governmental agricultural banks, or
lending systems which would take other ways of guarantee, such as the Grameen
Bank in Bangladesh.



What will happen? I don’t know... But it was
really interesting to analyze and see the systemic relations and the systemic
causes of underdevelopment in that country.&nbsp;