Welcome to Zitamar’s daily Mozambique briefing for 5 April, 2018.
Agenda
- Today: Private business association CTA holds a workshop to discuss its position on planned Local Content legislation
- Today: President Filipe Nyusi gives a lecture at foreign affairs institute ISRI on “The International and Domestic Environment for Peace in Mozambique: Actors, Consensus, Challenges and Perspectives”
- Today and tomorrow: Meteorological Institute INAM forecasts a heat wave in Maputo Province and City, of between 35-38°C
The latest from Zitamar News:
Gemfields starts resettling community around Mozambique ruby mine
Each of 105 families in the village of Nthoro will receive an area of 5,000m2 containing a new house
The best of the rest:
- Malnutrition affects 40% of Mozambican children
- Unemployed mechanics protest over immigrants taking their jobs
- Nyusi visits Chibuto heavy sands concession
- DRC police arrest three Mozambicans for involvement in Mocímboa attacks
- Indian sugar refinery to start operating in August
Malnutrition affects 43% of Mozambican children (VoA)
Around 43% of Mozambican under-5s are suffering from chronic malnutrition – a statistic that has not improved over the last 10 years, according to UNICEF.
The UNICEF report says malnutrition costs the Mozambican economy MZN 16 billion per year in lost productivity – quite apart from the impact on quality of life, which is presumably harder to quantify.
Unemployed mechanics protest over immigrants taking their jobs (O País)
Over 100 members of the Association of Unemployed Professional Mechanics protested outside the Ministry of Labour in Maputo yesterday, complaining that jobs in megaprojects are going to foreigners rather than Mozambicans. The minister met with the group, and decided to create a joint commission to monitor the selection criteria for candidates for vacancies on megaprojects.
Coincidence or not, the protest and resulting ‘joint commission’ come just as a previous five-year Memorandum of Understanding between the association and the ministry comes to an end. The powerful business lobby group, the CTA, is today discussing its contribution to a local content law – which will play a key role both in the viability of megaprojects, and in how they contribute to the local economy and employment.
Nyusi visits Chibuto heavy sands concession (AIM)
Filipe Nyusi visited the heavy sand mine concession in Chibuto, Gaza, operated by Chinese group Anhui Foreign Economic Construction Group (AFECC) which says it will invest over $1 billion in it, including resettling 1,500 households and building a 70km railway to join up to the line running to Maputo. A test factory is already operating, able to process 1,000 tonnes of ore a day, and when the project is fully operational, it should employ 3,000 Mozambican workers.
AFECC is now probably most famous in Mozambique for the Gloria Hotel which it has built in Maputo, but it has its fingers in many pies – including working on the EN6 highway upgrade, and diamond mining in neighbouring Zimbabwe and DRC.
DRC police arrest three Mozambicans for involvement in Mocímboa attacks (RFI)
Three Mozambicans have been arrested in the Democratic Republic of Congo, accused of involvement with the terrorist attacks in and around Mocimboa da Praia in Cabo Delgado, since October last year.
It’s unclear whether these men are separate from another three, reportedly repatriated to Mozambique by Congolese authorities at the end of last month after their Islamist base was overrun by state forces there.
Indian sugar refinery to start operating in August (AIM)
Indian-owned Pure Diets Moçambique will start its sugar refinery in Moamba in August this year, the company said, during a site visit by Maputo Province governor Raimundo Diomba. It is investing around €30m and will produce 40 tonnes of organic sugar per day.
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