POTENTIAL INVESTORS SHOWING INTEREST IN MOZAMBIQUE

Mozambican President Armando Guebuza on Wednesday declared that he had found “a lot of sympathy” for Mozambique from potential investors he had met at the meeting of the World Economic Forum for Africa in Cape Town.Speaking to the Mozambican reporters who accompanied him to South Africa, Guebuza said he had been particularly interested in debates around agriculture “to see if we can gain from the experience of others, and win more sustainable investment for Mozambique”.Guebuza stressed that the role of peasant farmers is crucial. “They must not be marginalized, since they are part of the solution”, he said, “We must increase the productivity of peasant agriculture, and ensure a shift from subsistence agriculture to agriculture that produces a surplus, and participates in the monetarised economy”.He agreed that the poor state of roads into key production areas in rural Mozambique, and the lack of bank credit for farmers were crucial obstacles that must be solved.As for promoting “green growth”, the theme of a panel discussion the Mozambican leader participated in, Guebuza stressed “we must look for the most accessible forms of energy”. In much of the country, that meant power from the Cahora Bassa dam on the Zambezi, and that electricity would be transmitted wherever possible, notably along the new power line to be built from the Zambezi Valley to Maputo.“But that will not reach all the population who need power”, Guebuza acknowledged. “We have to use other, renewable sources, such as solar and wind power”.Among the business leaders who sought meetings with Guebuza were two executives from Hewlett-Packard – the Senior Vice President for Market Growth, Brian Humphries, and the Executive Director for the Middle East, Mediterranean and Africa, Santiago Cortes. Guebuza described Hewlett-Packard as one of the leading companies in the world for new technologies. The two executives “wanted to know what we think they could do” – and so the President invited them to visit Mozambique and invest in the country.As many Mozambican institutions have discovered to their cost, much of the equipment sold as Hewlett-Pasckard in Mozambique is in fact counterfeit. Unscrupulous retailers sell pirated goods, and Guebuza was sure that, if Hewlett-Packard invests in Mozambique, “they will be interested in helping the government in the fight against piracy”.Guebuza also received the Libyan ambassador to South Africa. The Mozambican authorities, he said, wanted to hear about the Libyan crisis “from all sources”. He was, however, convinced that “there must be a negotiated solution, reached through dialogue”.