In recent years, Northern aid donors have become more and more vocal about corruption in Southern countries and the need for these countries to clean themselves up. Northern donors themselves, however, continue to require Southern countries to implement those economic liberalisation policies, including cutting back on state spending and responsibilities, that increase corruption.
Mozambique is a case in point. Corruption was almost non-existent here in the 1970s, but has grown to high levels since the 1990s. Increasing intervention by international financial institutions, such as the World Bank, and bilateral aid donors over the past two decades in support of liberalisation, facilitated by tacit alliances between donors and a section of the Mozambican elite, is one of the causes.