Summers Tours Ravaged Mozambique

Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers on Friday chose an unlikely place to relive his past life as a professor: a squalid refugee camp for thousands of Mozambicans displaced by devastating floods.

Standing amid a throng of young children, the former Harvard economist conducted a brief lesson in arithmetic, challenging them with simple problems of addition.

The solution to three plus three was one of his easier questions. But when asked for the solution to nine plus eight, a debate ensued among the youngsters. Reluctantly, they came up with their answer: 18.

The desperate conditions faced by some 5,000 refugees at the Kongolote Accommodation Center--malnutrition, poor sanitation, rudimentary health and education services--are mirrored across this impoverished southern African nation.

By the late 1990s, Mozambique had turned into one of the continent’s few economic success stories, shaking off the legacy of decades of civil war and socialist planning to achieve growth rates of more than 10%.

But now the former Portuguese colony faces the daunting task of rebuilding its ravaged economy after it was hit with massive floods this year. At least 640 people were killed and hundreds of thousands were displaced from their homes.

International donors have pledged some $450 million in aid to help the economy back on its feet, and creditors have offered $1 billion in debt relief. Still, the World Bank estimates the floods will dampen the country’s growth rate by up to three percentage points this year.

Officials at the refugee camp told Summers, in Mozambique as part of a five-nation tour of Africa, that they desperately need funds to buy an ambulance and to improve children’s education.

“The United States is trying to help,” Summers told them. “We’re here because the United States is very concerned about being friends with Mozambique.”

With eight teachers struggling to teach basic reading, writing and arithmetic to the camp’s 800-plus schoolchildren, academic skills are at a premium in Kongolote camp, just outside the capital, Maputo.

“We have some books, but not enough,” one of the teachers, Crisodio Cossa, told Summers. “We have almost nothing here.”

Over at the camp’s health clinic--a government-issue tent furnished with two plastic chairs and a table--the doctor, Luis Antonio Sitoe, sees as many as 120 patients every day. Apart from his good advice, he has only a few aspirin pills and rehydration salts to offer. More urgent cases are sent to a nearby hospital.

“Sixty percent of those who come here suffer from malaria,” Sitoe told the visiting U.S. official. “And we get more and more of them here.”

As the floods are receding, Mozambique now faces an epidemic of malaria, a potentially deadly disease spread by mosquitoes. Other dangers to the struggling population include cholera and diarrhea, aggravated by malnutrition and unsafe water supplies.

After visiting the refugee camp, Summers met Mozambique’s President Joaquin Chissano, encouraging him to continue putting the money the country saves through stepped-up debt relief where it matters most: health care, education and poverty reduction.

He later told reporters that he was encouraged by Chissano’s commitment to modernizing the economy and increasing much-needed social investment, and gave an upbeat assessment of Mozambique’s prospects.

“The pluses substantially outweigh the minuses over the last several years,” Summers said.

Chissano, speaking to a group of U.S. reporters after meeting Summers, said Mozambique had managed to build a solid foundation for economic development.

“The growth is there and we are trying to sustain it,” he said. “But now we have to bring in social programs and poverty reduction.”