Mozambique: Our Bright Future!

Tackling food security and child literacy rates in rural Mozambique

Mozambique has identified food insecurity and its early grade school system’s shortcomings as interconnected. Indeed, fewer than half of Mozambican children complete primary school, while rates of teacher absenteeism are some of the highest in the world. Though it has significantly improved food security – cutting the number in half in 2015 – Mozambique ranked 180 of 189 countries in the 2019 Human Development Index. 

Our Bright Future!, which is supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition project, is a four-and-half-year program to assist Mozambique to expand its bilingual literacy program and build the foundation for a sustainable school feeding program. Primed by Counterpart International, Our Bright Future! is a comprehensive, $22 million initiative designed to support multi-sectoral national strategies to improve food security, reduce the incidence of hunger and improve literacy of school children in Mozambique. 

As an implementing partner, Creative leads curriculum development and education capacity building activities that seamlessly extend the successful bilingual materials and approaches developed under previous USAID and USDA investments in Mozambique. Specifically, Creative aims to expand bilingual education in Maputo Province, improving the literacy of school-aged children.  

The project will help to improve education quality through teacher professional development and provide students with quality instruction and learning materials — particularly in Xirhonga and Xichangana. Our Bright Future! is also strengthening the linkages between local and national-level decision-makers through data-driven approaches, like supporting district education officers to implement the Local Education Monitoring Approach (LEMA).  

Our Bright Future! builds off Creative’s recent USAID-funded Vamos Ler! (Let’s Read!) program in Mozambique. Vamos Ler! developed bilingual education pedagogical tools and activities, improved national early-grade literacy policies and delivery and monitoring systems, enhanced school leadership, and increased parental and community engagement in early-grade literacy. The five-year program from 2016-2021 built the government’s ability to create policies, tools and approaches to early grade literacy that are flexible, results-oriented and affordable.