Road holds back tourism in Angoche

The town of Angoche in the northern Mozambican province of Nampula is losing about seven thousand tourists per year due to the poor condition of the road from the provincial capital.Angoche is said by some to have the best beaches in the country. They are untouched and fringed with mangroves. In addition, Angoche is an ideal port for boats travelling to the unspoilt Ilhas Primeiras and Secundas. This chain of islands provides a home for nesting turtles, whilst the surrounding Indian Ocean is the habitat for dugongs, which are highly endangered marine mammals.The district administrator Edite Fonseca argues that the poor state of the road, which runs for 180 kilometres to the city of Nampula, is a barrier to exploiting the area’s huge potential, which also includes mineral and marine resources.Fonseca lamented, “overall, the district of Angoche is nowhere near being a tourist destination and cannot contribute to the country’s development. It is a town that has come to a standstill, and this is due to the lack of a tarred road linking it with Nampula”.Fonseca added that only 180 tourists visit the town every year. Almost all of these are local tourists as foreigners rarely visit the area.For Fonseca, this is a real tragedy as with a decent road Angoche could receive at least twenty tourists each day.Other economic activities have also come to a halt because, even though the area has mineral and marine resources, investors are absent because of the difficulty in transporting potential goods to market.According to the provincial strategic development plan for 2010 to 2020, the asphalting of the road is due to take place before the end of the decade. In addition, the road between Monapo and Angoche is due to be tarred.Angoche has around 85,000 residents with an economy that depends largely on fishing.