This Wednesday, 24 July, the Mozambican President invited Arab businesspeople to continue investing in the country, during the Arab-Mozambican Investment Forum which ended this Thursday (25).
During his speech at the opening of the event, Filipe Nyusi highlighted five priority areas for investment in the country that are opportunities for Arab entrepreneurs.
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“Firstly, we have the logistics area. Here we highlight the airport complexes that take advantage of Mozambique’s geostrategic situation. Players in the sector can seize opportunities in other ports, including the recent initiative by three countries – Botswana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe – to build the future port of Techobanini, which will meet their needs,’ he said, also highlighting toll roads, in public-private partnerships, and, from the outset, some parts of National Road Number 1 (N1), which connects the whole country with branches to the coast and inland countries.
‘We believe there is a need to start thinking about an alternative road that can facilitate circulation and bring some production areas closer together,’ he said.
Secondly, the head of state highlighted the energy sector, pointing to the construction of the Mphanda Nkuwa dam, which plays a crucial role in generating clean energy for the southern African market, which is at the stage of commercial structuring to make it viable, including financial mobilisation. ‘We have hydrocarbon fields still in the exploration phase, and we have investment potential in renewable energies, especially solar, but at the same time in strategic mineral resources for the production of electric batteries,’ said Filipe Nyusi.
Family photo from the event
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“Thirdly, we have the tourism sector. Take advantage of the potential of the long coastline and the Indian Ocean islands, looking at the land and beach product, along with other market segments, such as the fauna and biodiversity spread across the parks and reserves we have, with emphasis on Niassa, Gorongosa, Maputo and others,’ the statesman appealed.
The Mozambican President pointed to the telecommunications sector (fourth place), where he invited the Arab business community to invest in mobile telephony and the digital economy, which can leverage information and knowledge and help to reduce physical paperwork. “Finally, we have agribusiness in fifth place. This is our brand, our flag. We are an agricultural country with a lot of water, arable land, which presents a wide range of opportunities, starting with tropical fruit and high-value products such as nuts and rice,’ he said.
Thirdly, there’s the tourism sector.Take advantage of the potential of the long coastline and the Indian Ocean islands, looking at the land and beach product, along with other market segments, such as the fauna and biodiversity spread across the parks and reserves we have, with emphasis on Niassa, Gorongosa, Maputo and others
Filipe Nyusi
Arab investment on the African continent
Citing a report, the head of state said that Arab investment in the African continent fell by 2.8 billion meticals (45 billion dollars) in 2022, after peaking in 2021 at around five billion meticals (80 billion dollars). ‘Due to the heterogeneity of the continent, the variation by region is different, especially for North Africa, where there was a 58 per cent increase in investments and, in contrast, Southern Africa with a drop of 84 per cent and West Africa with a negative variation of 35 per cent,’ he said.
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Finally, we have agribusiness in fifth place.This is our brand, our flag.We are an agricultural country with lots of water, arable land, which presents a wide range of opportunities, starting with tropical fruit and high-value products such as chestnuts and rice
Filipe Nyusi
Despite this global value, Filipe Nyusi continued, an important note is the new configuration that ‘investment flows are taking due to the role of the Gulf countries, namely: United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Oman. These countries have invested close to 6.3 trillion meticals (100 billion dollars) in the last decade and last year announced around 3.3 trillion meticals (53 billion dollars) in new investments for the African continent. In this way, we can see the emergence and growing preponderance of investments from the Gulf countries on our continent.”
