Aid and HIV/AIDS Policies in Mozambique: Successes and Obstacles towards Country Ownership

This paper seeks to understand the relationship between aid and AIDS in Mozambique’s aided response towards the HIV/AIDS struggle and in assessing to what extent aid impacts on the country’s HIV/AIDS policies. Mozambique’s HIV/AIDS policy document is its guiding document with guid-ing principles towards the country’s fight of the disease yet it is met with many challenges. First it is barely implemented at country level, second there is little control of the actors by the coordinating body, third donors still prefer vertical funding although they support the general budget which when analysed de-creases financial resources towards direct policy implementation and fourth the policy lacks a valuation making it hard to evaluate to which extent expenditures correspond to priorities in financial terms. 96% of aid to fight HIV/AIDS comes from external sources which questions the country’s sustainability of the HIV/AIDS response. And with increased focus on “Ownership”, Mozambique has few options but to scale up its aid and improve on aid effec-tiveness while bringing all its actors on board for an effective coordination and policy implementation.