On a continent where good economic news seems all too rare, IFPRI researchers recently unearthed some remarkably positive economic trends.

Mozambique is still one of the world's poorest countries. Nevertheless, that country cut its poverty rate dramatically between 1997 and 2003, according to research conducted by IFPRI and collaborators in the Mozambique Ministry of Planning and Finance (MPF). The proportion of Mozambicans living below the poverty line dropped from 69 to 54 percent during that period. The country therefore appears to have surpassed the goal set by the government in its Action Plan to Reduce Absolute Poverty, namely, reducing the poverty rate to 60 percent by 2005.

Since the economic trends in Sub-Saharan Africa so often head in the wrong direction, what has Mozambique been doing right?

"Some of it is the country bouncing back from the war, which ended in 1992," says Kenneth Simler, project leader for IFPRI. "But our study shows there's more to it than that." Not only has military spending fallen dramatically, but the country opened its economy to trade and tourism as well as mining and other major investments. For the longer term, the government is investing heavily in education, health, and infrastructure.

Before this study, donors and development experts argued about whether poverty was rising or falling--partly because of differences in the trends between provinces. The study, however, is now widely cited and appears to have shifted the debate from whether poverty is dropping, to how best to increase momentum toward continued poverty reduction. Earlier work by IFPRI, MPF, and Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM) is credited with contributing to the priorities laid out in the country's Poverty Reduction Strategy.

The poverty study did double duty as a capacity strengthening tool. Simler and collaborator Channing Arndt (associate professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University and an IFPRI visiting research fellow), were based at the MPF for extended periods to train young Mozambican economists in poverty analysis.

In Mozambique, says Simler, "There is a very thin layer of people with university education. And they're very good. But there simply aren't enough of them. We're trying to develop a pipeline of bright people trained in policy analysis, to increase the number of informed producers and consumers of empirical policy research in Mozambique." Three of the Mozambican counterparts recently completed honors theses at UEM that explored various dimensions of poverty; they will be starting M.Sc. studies in 2005. Meanwhile, one of the first trainees from the IFPRI/MPF collaboration returns to MPF in 2005 after completing a master's degree in South Africa.