The main purpose of this report is to deepen the analysis and estimate of the main indicators on human development within the country, particular in Mozambique's provinces and macro-regions. To this end, it has been necessary to overcome some methodological and analytical limitations never previously solved. In particular, a methodology has been established to disaggregate the national gross domestic product (GDP) by provinces and regions. Without this, it would not be possible to estimate, for example, the provincial and regional human development index (HDI), or to clarify certain dynamics of economic growth and development in each province and region of the country.

The possibility of estimating the GDP and the HDI represents an advance in analytical and methodological capacity which goes beyond the scope of this report. First, as from now it is becoming possible to overcome a rather paradoxical limitation of specialists who study economic and development dynamics within the country. While an official or researcher, sitting in his or her Washington or New York office, could calculate Mozambique's national GDP or HDI, a specialist living in Maputo city was not able to estimate the contribution made by each province or region to those economic and development indicators. Obviously, the question underlying this parallel does not refer so much to distance, but to capacity and to the availability of the means (data and methods) to undertake increasingly specific and local analyses.