Welcome to Zitamar’s daily Mozambique briefing for 19 October 2017.

The latest from Zitamar News:

Mozambique transport minister to replace conflicted cabotage MoUs ‘within days’
…following
Mozambique Attorney General demands reversal of ‘corrupt’ cabotage MoUs
Cracking down on corruption is of course always welcome, but the authorities seem to have missed their mark with this one – forcing the transport ministry to pointlessly jump through hoops to recover an agreement that appeared to be in the public interest rather than the interest of the private port operator.

Mozambique signs new bean export deals with India
The Instituto de Cereais de Moçambique went to India and came home with a multi-million dollar grant and expanded oversight of bean trading. The benefits to farmers on the ground remain to be seen.

The best of the rest:

Teachers accused of sex offences transferred to different schools (AIM, Notícias)
Teachers accused of sexual harassment of girl pupils in a Maputo secondary school have not been arrested, or even thrown out of the teaching profession, but merely transferred to other schools. According to a report in Noticias on Wednesday, 83 girls at the Eduardo Mondlane Secondary School complained against the teachers, who were then suspended for two months and are now being transferred to other schools. The head of human resources for the KaMavota district education directorate, Josina Muchanga, said it was hoped that the teachers would take the opportunity to repent of their acts, and would not repeat them.
Some hope! The transfer of paedophile priests to different churches has been a huge scandal for the Catholic Church – but for Mozambique’s education ministry it’s apparently a suitable punishment.

Elections authority says it’s ready for Nampula by-election (O País)
Abdul Carimo, president of Mozambique’s elections authority, the Comissão Nacional de Eleições (CNE), said yesterday that any difficulties organising a by-election in Nampula have to do with other state organisations – but the CNE, and its sister organisation STAE, have the technical and material capacity to run the elections.
One reader of the Zitamar Daily Briefing pointed out yesterday that the rules on the by-election state that it must be run if the incumbent dies 12 months before the end of their mandate – which in the case of Mahamudo Amurane, assassinated on 4 October, runs until 6 February 2019 – due to the delay between the elections and the actual handover of power. Nevertheless, the government says it is still deciding whether or not to run the by-election.

EDM’s generous salary and benefit packages exposed (Canal de Moçambique)
EDM’s directors and CEO earn on average 1.2 million meticais ($20,000) per month, and have been doing so since at least 2010, the company has confirmed to Canal de Moçambique. CEO Mateus Magala is not even expected to meet his own housing costs out of that salary – EDM pays for a ‘luxury suite’ at the Indy Village, having moved him out of Hotel Polana, Canal reports.
EDM responded to Canal’s report by saying that its directors’ salaries are below international market rates for similar types of positions, but this will be of little comfort to the vast majority of Mozambicans who are paying those salaries out of incomes far below international averages – and many of whom still don’t have access to EDM’s electricity.

Flights restart between Maputo and Inhambane (@Verdade)
Flights from Maputo to the popular tourist destinations of Inhambane and Vilankulo restarted again on Monday, 16 October, having been suspended on 12 October after leases ran out on LAM’s only planes able to land at those two airports. The suspension of flights caused losses to the tourism industry there, DW África reported.

EU funds for renewables auction mechanism (PV Magazine)
The European Union will give Mozambique €4 million for the ‘Projeto de Promoção de Leilões para Energias Renováveis (PROLER)’, aimed at creating an auction mechanism for the development of large-scale solar and renewable energy projects. The initiative will be implemented by the French development agency AFD and electricity utility EDM, with the EU funds allocated through the Africa Infrastructure Trust Fund.
There were no details on when and how the new auction scheme may be implemented. A World Bank-run auction system in Zambia led to French company Neoen signing one of Africa’s cheapest ever solar power purchase agreements. The same company is developing a solar power project in Cabo Delgado – which is sure to be significantly more expensive, due to a lack of World Bank involvement, among other factors.

SA company aims to improve Mozambican chicken production (Farmer’s Weekly)
South Africa’s Philafrica Foods is partnering with Mozambique’s Novos Horizontes to improve chicken production and supply within Mozambique. The partnership is the first for Philafrica, a subsidiary of South Africa’s AFGRI Group, which is planning to invest up to R1.5 billion ($111m) in food production across Africa over the next 18 to 24 months. Novos Horizontes started in 2005 with 250 small chicken farmers to which it supplied inputs on credit and from which it purchased full-grown birds for slaughtering, processing and marketing – but that number has since decreased to around 130 smallholder farmers “as a result of production challenges”.

Agenda

• Today: Day 1 of the two-day Mozambique Gas Summit
• Today: SADC / EU seminar on renewable energy, chaired by Mozambique’s deputy energy minister Augusto Fernando de Sousa, at Hotel Cardoso
• Today: The 31st anniversary of the Mbuzini plane crash which killed Mozambique’s first President, Samora Machel.

© 2017, Zitamar Ltd. Reproduction and dissemination prohibited without written permission.