Maputo, 9 Apr (AIM) – Mozambique’s Minister of Agriculture, Roberto Albino, challenged the country’s safari operators to attract young people to the wildlife economy and its value chain.

According to the minister, who was speaking on Wednesday, in Maputo, at a Conference on Wildlife Economy, the low involvement of young people means that their economic potential is being underutilized.

“If the involvement of safari agents remains remote, it is a sign that the sector is not being sufficiently used, which shows that it has not yet managed to capture the necessary interest, especially from young people”, he said.

To reverse the situation, the minister called on safari operators to reinforce young people’s technical skills.

“It is essential to create space for conservation to translate into effective development, with visible benefits for all stakeholders, from park managers to local communities”, he warned.

In turn, Carlos Santos, president of the NGO Biofund, stated “There are clear signs that wildlife already has an important importance, but it can contribute much more to the national economy. We need a results-oriented debate capable of aligning conservation with economic development”.

The head of the country’s Safari Operators Association, Adamo Valy, considered the meeting an opportunity to redefine the direction of the sector through the analysis of successful models in the region.

“The role of operators in remote areas, where they often provide direct support to communities, is important because it paves the way for greater institutional coordination to make the sector more competitive and sustainable,” he said.
(AIM)
Ad/pf (266)

Maputo, 9 Apr (AIM) – Mozambican President Daniel Chapo presented to the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, a bill that will eliminate an entire level of governance, eliminating mountains of bureaucracy and making substantial savings.

With the stroke of a pen, Chapo undid the 2018 constitutional changes that introduced a cumbersome system of local authorities in the name of decentralization.

This complex system had two overlapping layers of provincial power. Alongside the provincial government, headed by an elected provincial governor, and known as “decentralized provincial governance”, there were “state representation bodies in the province”, known as the “State Representation Council”, introduced because supposedly there are state functions that cannot be ensured by the provincial governor.

This was bitterly contested from the beginning. Both within and outside the ruling Frelimo Party, complaints were raised that state representative bodies were unnecessary, merely duplicating the work of provincial governors. It was said that unelected bodies were undermining elected provincial governors.

Opposition parties argued that the dual system was a way for Frelimo to cling to power in the provinces if opposition members were elected provincial governors.

But the mayors elected by Frelimo also saw no reason to hand over power to the State Representation Councils. One of the first voices to be raised against the useless duplication of bodies was that of Eneas Comiche, then Mayor of Maputo, and an important figure in Frelimo.

Chapo said that the elimination of State representative bodies in the provinces will save 1,250 million meticais (about 20 million dollars) from the State Budget every year.

He asked the Assembly to insert his bill on the agenda of the current session as a matter of urgency, and there are no signs that Frelimo deputies will oppose this request.

The bill means that the jobs of dozens of employees will be cut from the budget, and it is not yet clear how – or even if – they will be compensated.

Chapo said his bill also fulfills a promise he made in his inaugural address in January 2025 to restructure provincial state bodies.
(AIM)
Pf/ (362)

Chimoio (Mozambique), 9 April (AIM) – Mozambican authorities have suspended eight health professionals from the central province of Manica for alleged negligence that resulted in the death of a patient and her baby during childbirth.

The tragedy occurred at the Hospital in the provincial capital, Chimoio (HPC). The professionals in question were on duty in the maternity ward of that health unit last Sunday.

According to Saulo Dimas, husband of the deceased woman, in a letter addressed to Mozambican President Daniel Chapo, the
health professionals were negligent in ignoring signs of worsening of the patient’s clinical condition.

“During labor, my wife was weak and my mother-in-law suggested that she be taken to the operating room for a cesarean section. But the nurses on duty said that would be a treat, until she couldn’t resist and lost her life along with the baby,” said Dimas. “I appeal to the President to send an investigation team to that hospital, because there are reports of other cases of negligence that culminated in deaths.”

Following the complaint, HPC management immediately suspended the entire team on duty, in order to ensure an impartial investigation.

According to HPD director Marília Pugas, speaking to journalists this Wednesday, an investigation is underway to determine the real causes of the incident.

“This is work that we are carrying out in coordination with the Public Ministry and the National Criminal Investigation Service (SERNIC). An autopsy was carried out and the results were sent to the competent authorities for further procedures”, he said.

Pugas acknowledged the existence of allegations of negligence at the hospital. She alleged this whenever such complaints are received. “We investigate and, if confirmed, we act according to the seriousness of the infractions committed”.

Pugas also appealed to the public to report any cases of poor service, in order to contribute to improving the quality of services provided.

“Patients should not be afraid to inform hospital management when they feel they are being mistreated. This is the effort we are making in the sector, to guarantee humanized care, because our greatest value must continue to be life”, he concluded.
(AIM)
NM /ad/pf (373)

Maputo, 09 Apr (AIM) – The Mozambican government launched the National Tourism Master Plan on Wednesday, which aims to improve the business environment and make the country more attractive to private investment.

According to Fredson Bacar, Secretary of State for Tourism, speaking during the launch of the project in Maputo, the plan will establish clear rules, investment priorities and coordination mechanisms between the public and private sectors, factors considered essential to boost tourism growth.

“The aim is to create a more predictable, organized and attractive business environment where the private sector can invest with confidence,” he said.

He explained that the plan will identify concrete actions and their respective costs, allowing for better planning and mobilization of resources for the sector.

Bacar also revealed that the project has the support of the World Bank, which has provided technical and financial assistance in the development of guiding instruments and the implementation of structuring projects.

Bacar highlighted that improving the business environment also involves investing in infrastructure, roads, water supply, sanitation and security systems, considered crucial to attract investors.

“The private sector only invests where the conditions are created. It is up to the State to guarantee these conditions so that investment can take place”, he stated.

Bacar added that the instruments under development should also contribute to the organization of tourist destinations, the definition of priority areas and the valorization of local potential, with a direct impact on the generation of employment and income for communities.

For his part, Laurent Corthay, World Bank representative in Mozambique, said that a multisectoral approach is crucial.

“The tourism sector is not the responsibility of just one ministry. It is highly multisectoral and requires the participation of sectors as diverse as the environment, transport, interior, security, police, and also at local level”, he stated.
(AIM)
Sn/announcement/pf (306)

Maputo, 08 Apr (AIM) – Mozambique’s former Finance Minister, Manuel Chang, returned to Maputo on Sunday, after serving a 102-month sentence for fraud and money laundering for his role in Mozambique’s biggest scandal, known as the “hidden debts” case.

The term “hidden debts” refers to the scheme through which three fraudulent Mozambican state-owned companies, Proindicus, Ematum (Empresa Moçambicana de Atum) and MAM (Mozambique Asset Management), all managed by the SISE security service, obtained loans worth more than two billion US dollars from Credit Suisse and VTB banks in Russia.

No bank in its right mind would grant such large loans to companies with no track record and managed by an intelligence service. But any doubts Credit Suisse and VTB may have had were overcome when Chang, as Finance Minister, signed sovereign guarantees, which meant that if companies defaulted, the Mozambican state would reimburse the banks.

And sure enough, the three companies quickly went bankrupt, and so the hidden loans turned into hidden debts. The guarantees signed by Chang were illegal, as the loans exceeded the maximum loan limit established under the 2013 and 2014 budget laws.

The loans were a corrupt scheme devised by the Abu Dhabi-based Privinvest group, which spent hundreds of millions of dollars bribing Mozambican officials (including Chang) and Credit Suisse bankers. Under these agreements, Privinvest became the sole contractor of the three fake companies and sold them fishing boats, radar stations and other assets at highly inflated prices.

Chang was arrested at Johannesburg International Airport in December 2018 on the basis of an international arrest warrant issued by US prosecutors. Because American investors were among those duped in the scandal, the US wanted Chang to stand trial in New York.

Belatedly, Mozambican authorities stated that Chang should be put on trial in Maputo. Chang’s lawyers worked for five years to avoid extradition to the US. Eventually, they failed and in 2023 Chang was deported from Johannesburg to New York.

He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering, and Judge Nicholas Garaufis sentenced him to eight and a half years in prison.

Chang’s defense team tried to secure his early release for health reasons. The judge rejected the request because he did not believe the lawyers had provided convincing evidence of any serious medical condition that would justify early release.

Chang was released from a US federal prison on March 26, but an attempt to deport him immediately failed. Chang’s lawyers bought him a plane ticket from Boston to Maputo, via Lisbon – but the Portuguese airline TAP wouldn’t allow him to board the plane.

Chang was detained by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency at Boston’s Logan Airport because his emergency travel document, issued by the Mozambique embassy in Lisbon, was not previously authorized by Portuguese authorities (who would be responsible for the former minister during his transit).

Therefore, Chang remained in ICE custody until this bureaucratic problem could be resolved.

According to Radio France International, the deportation was postponed until Sunday, when he was placed on a regular Ethiopian Airways flight from Addis Ababa to Maputo, arriving in the Mozambican capital in the early afternoon.

Before the trial in New York, Mozambique’s Attorney General’s Office (PGR) repeatedly insisted that Mozambique was the only country with the legitimacy to put Chang on trial.

In effect, the PGR had drawn up a long list of crimes for which it intended to charge Chang. But no attempt was made to arrest Chang when he arrived.
(AIM)
Pf/ (601)

Maputo, 08 Apr (AIM) – Residents of the village of Mucojo, Macomia district, Cabo Delgado province, northern Mozambique, expressed their concern about the movement of suspected Islamic terrorists in the region.

According to local sources, cited by Agência Notícias Portuguesa (Lusa), the alleged terrorists appear as civilians among the residents and, after a few days, disappear, leaving residents worried and afraid of possible attacks.

“Sometimes people appear there and then disappear, without the communities knowing exactly where they are going,” said a source.

The sources explained that some suspects are young people from the community, allegedly members of the armed group that carries out jihadist attacks in Cabo Delgado.

“Some are not strangers, they are from Mucojo, but they stay and then disappear without saying where they are going,” said another source.

According to residents, the reports are known to the Mozambican Defense and Security Forces, who have been on the ground to monitor the situation.

“The forces are aware and are always present in coordination with the communities, monitoring and doing everything to prevent infiltrators,” said a source.

The gas-rich province of Cabo Delgado has been the target of extremist attacks since 2017, when terrorists attacked the Mocímboa da Praia district.
(AIM)
Ad/pf (217)

Maputo, 8 April (AIM) – The Rwandan government revealed that it has more than 6,300 soldiers deployed in Northern Mozambique to support the fight against Islamic terrorists.

The Rwandan Forces were deployed in 2021 at the request of the Mozambican government to support the fight against jihadist groups operating in the region.

According to Rwandan government spokesperson Yolande Makolo, this number is three times higher than the number sent in 2021 and therefore a “sustainable financing framework is needed to continue”.

The Rwandan government had already announced that the Rwandan military presence in Mozambique depends on “adequate and predictable” financing. The announcement comes at a time when financial support from the European Peace Mechanism is set to expire in May “with no plans for renewal”, according to EU officials.

Rwanda has so far received around 40 million euros (46.7 million US dollars at the current exchange rate) in EU support for the counter-insurgency mission in Mozambique.

According to Makolo, in a post on X (formerly Twitter), the long-term deployment of Rwandan forces in joint counterterrorism operations in Mozambique requires a sustainable financing framework.

“Having so far borne the majority of the financial burden of these operations, a transition to more equitable financing is a strategic necessity,” she said.

She explained that it is up to the Mozambican government to provide the financing.

“Rwanda has not and will not seek additional funds from the European Peace Mechanism. This is an issue for Mozambique. Rwanda’s deployment requires sustainable financing, and it is up to the host government and its partners with large investments in Cabo Delgado to provide this, as it always has been,” she said.

“On the other hand, Rwanda is pleased to have been able to contribute together with our Mozambican allies to defeat terrorists, protect the residents of Cabo Delgado and allow the implementation of investments,” he added.

The spokesperson also said that civilians are the biggest beneficiaries of the joint security mission.

“Investments in gas benefit European and global security/energy interests, not those of Rwanda. Rwandan forces are present in Cabo Delgado in response to the Government of Mozambique’s request for support,” Makolo said.

Last March, the US government imposed sanctions against the Rwandan Armed Forces and four senior Rwandan officials appointed as a result of “direct operational support to the March 23 Movement (M23) and its affiliates in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)”.

The M23 rebels are said to be representatives of the Rwandan government, although Rwanda has repeatedly denied this.

The insurgency in Cabo Delgado, which broke out in 2017, paralyzed the construction of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, led by the French company TotalEnergies. But the work of the Mozambican defense and security forces and their Rwandan allies, particularly in the main districts of Palma and Mocímboa da Praia, allowed TotalEnergies to lift the state of force majeure it had declared in 2021.

In January this year, the French energy company and the Mozambican government agreed to resume construction of the project.
(AIM)
Ad/pf (512)

Maputo, 8 April (AIM) – Mozambican Finance Minister, Carla Louveira, accused the World Bank of using outdated statistics in its latest report on Mozambique.

The report, entitled “Economic Update of Mozambique: From Fragility to Stability”, published in March, states that Mozambique is “the second poorest country and among the ten most unequal in the world”.

Just as the World Bank should have expected, this led to a series of media headlines announcing that Mozambique is “the second poorest country” on the planet.

This is obviously false. Anyone who accepts the World Bank’s claim would have us believe that Mozambique is poorer than war-torn hellholes like Somalia, Afghanistan, Sudan or South Sudan.

This is far from the first time that the World Bank has spread falsehoods about Mozambique. In the late 1990s, for example, the Bank was at the forefront of an ideologically driven campaign to dismantle the cashew processing industry, using fraudulent statistics that made the extraordinary claim that processed cashew nuts were worth less than unprocessed nuts.

Today, in an equally poor quality exercise, the World Bank bases its statements about Mozambican poverty on figures that are years out of date. Speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the Mozambican Women’s Day celebrations on Tuesday in Maputo, Louveira said that, although the report is dated March 2026, the data is from 2019.

“The statistics used were collected during the Covid-19 pandemic period, and were published in 2022,” said Louveira. Furthermore, the World Bank report only analyzed “consumption poverty”, assessing whether families had enough money to purchase a “basic basket” of goods and services, while the Mozambican government has a broader definition of what it calls “multidimensional poverty”.

Furthermore, the Minister noted, the timeline used by the World Bank for the Mozambican case was different from that used for several other countries.

“In many of these countries”, said Louveira, “the comparative analysis was carried out with recent household surveys. If we used these more recent data, the picture in our country would obviously be different”.

Asked how the government managed to pay off, in advance, all of its debt to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Louveira stressed that it did not use the State Budget.

“Our country has liquid international reserves available”, he highlighted, and the government paid the debt to the IMF using these reserves.

There was no risk of running out of reserves, which were still sufficient to pay for four to five months of imports of goods and services. Paying the debt to the IMF would only have “a slight impact”, he insisted.

The debt paid was 515.04 million Special Drawing Rights (equivalent to 603.1 million dollars).
(AIM)
Pf/ (454)

Maputo, 8 Apr (AIM) – The death toll in the collapse of an illegal gold mine in the Vanduzi district, in the central province of Manica, rose from nine to 11.

The tragedy occurred on Sunday in a notorious region of Minas Gerais known as “Seis Carros”.

The mining region of “Seis Carros” became one of the biggest centers of attraction for gold prospectors in Manica. It is estimated that more than ten thousand people, including Mozambicans and foreigners, look for gold there, despite the risks.

In addition to mining, several commercial activities are carried out on site, mostly carried out by young people, creating a parallel economy that has been growing outside the control of the authorities.

According to the police spokesman in Manica, Mouzinho Manasse, other victims continue to be treated in hospital.

“Ten people were buried and died on the spot, in addition to five injured. Of these, three were in serious condition and were transferred to the Chimoio Provincial Hospital. Upon arrival there, one died,” he said.

Manasseh added that health authorities say the hospitalized victims are in stable condition.

The disaster at the “Seis Carros” mine is not an isolated case. Manica has a history of accidents in artisanal mines, many of them associated with landslides during the rainy season.

Mozambican authorities have expressed concern about growing cases of illegal mining, which experts believe is one of the sources of financing for Islamic terrorists operating in parts of the northern province of Cabo Delgado.

According to the National Directorate of Geology and Mining, the country loses revenue of around 90 million meticais (1.4 million dollars) per year due to illegal mining.
(AIM)
Ad/pf (293)

Maputo, 7 April (AIM) – Mozambican President, Daniel Chapo, launched on Tuesday a Fund for the Empowerment of Women, known as Empodera.

Marking Mozambican Women’s Day, celebrated every year on April 7th, Chapo stated “Empodera is an initiative that responds to one of the commitments made by our country: to promote women’s economic autonomy, expand their access to opportunities, support women’s productive initiatives, and create conditions for more women to move from a situation of vulnerability to prosperity, with dignity and hope”.

He added that the Empodera program also enshrines the commitment to combat domestic violence, gender-based violence and the murder of women.

“Our goal is clear,” Chapo said. “We want women to be economically empowered and socially protected. We want girls with guaranteed rights and we want a society that does not accept violence as a destiny or silence as an answer.”

“We are committed to better conditions so that every woman and every girl can live with safety, dignity and hope”, declared the President.

Promoting the rights of women and girls “must be understood as a condition for peace, national unity, reconciliation, poverty reduction and the construction of a fairer and more developed Mozambique,” ​​Chapo added.

He recalled that the country’s first President, Samora Machel, once declared that “the emancipation of women is not an act of charity: it is a necessity of the revolution, a guarantee of its continuity and the condition of its triumph”.

Chapo said he was certain that “there will be no sustainable development, no lasting peace, no shared prosperity as long as barriers that prevent women from fully exercising their rights persist.”

“We want a society in which men and women realize their potential and participate in equal dignity and opportunities”, he declared. “For us, the promotion of Mozambican women is a matter of justice, democracy, development and the future of the nation”.

Chapo noted that great advances have already been made in empowering women: thus, there is almost parity between the sexes in Mozambican secondary education (49.9 percent of secondary school students are girls) and, in 2025, 97 percent of all registered births will occur in health facilities.

“No society will be truly free until its women are fully respected,” said Chapo. “No economy will be genuinely inclusive as long as its women do not have equal access to opportunities. And no democracy will be truly solid as long as silences imposed by fear, dependence or discrimination persist.”
(AIM)
Pf/ (417)