Communications Plan
Introduction
The Supporting the Policy Environment for Economic Development (SPEED+) activity is a four-year (August 26, 2016 to August 25, 2020), $37.2 million project funded by United States Agency for International Development’s Mission in Mozambique (USAID/Mozambique). SPEED+ is designed to create a business enabling environment to attract investment, expand markets, and reduce costs, thus contributing to broad-based and inclusive economic growth and conservation of natural resources in Mozambique. SPEED+ will provide technical assistance and capacity-building to improve public-private policy dialogue, improve the policy environment for agriculture, trade, power, water, and biodiversity governance, and strengthen implementation of government policies and regulations. SPEED+ will support economic and structural policy reforms across 4 components: (1) agriculture, (2) trade, business enabling environment, (3) power, water, and (4) biodiversity conservation. It will also promote the areas of improved fiscal transparency, tax policy and economic and environmental governance. It will support multiple global initiatives including the Feed the Future Presidential Initiative, the Trade Africa Presidential Initiative, the G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, the USAID Biodiversity Policy, the President’s Strategy to Combat Wildlife Trafficking, and Power Africa.
USAID has worked closely for years with partners such as private sector companies and associations, civil society organizations, and the Government of Mozambique to make it easier to do business across sectors, put the country in a stronger competitive position, and increase trade and investment. Recent work has focused on reforming agricultural trade and investment policies with an eye on improving livelihoods of smallholder farmers as well as enabling agribusiness to flourish. The country faces new crises such as currency instability, falling prices of export commodities, inflation, and energy scarcity that hamper business and investment. Leaders and citizens both have also realized the necessity of taking urgent action to protect the nation’s unique biodiversity that is under enormous threat. Policy reforms to enable business and investment, simplify trade, increase access to energy, and protect wildlife are more important than ever.
The SPEED+ Communications Plan is designed to outline how communication is expected to occur in the project to (a) communicate activities, reforms and impacts to USAID and project counterparts and beneficiaries, but also to (b) use communication as a tool to champion reforms taking into account the political economy analysis undertaken by SPEED+. The Communications Plan outlines key USAID and program objectives, outlines key communication objectives and provides tools and strategies for advancing programmatic results through communication.