“Interlocutor to dialogue”

Former President of Mozambique Joaquim Chissano yesterday said that “an interlocutor” should be found among the armed groups carrying out attacks in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, arguing that “dialogue should never be discarded”.

“Dialogue should never be put aside, whatever the conflict. It is necessary to find who to talk to and about what to talk about,” Chissano declared.

Chissano was speaking about the armed conflict in Cabo Delgado in the context of “the genesis of political transformation in Mozambique under the 1990 Constitution”, the title of a round table held in Maputo on Thursday, where he was the key speaker. The former Mozambican head of state (1986-2005) pointed out that a “diagnosis” must be made about the causes of the conflict in Cabo Delgado, adding that the existence of abundant natural resources does not alone justify violence, because there are many countries rich in natural resources which do not have armed violence. “We must dig for the reason for this war in order to find the means to fight it. We must first have a clear diagnosis,” Chissano argued.

Watch the full conference below:

The province of Cabo Delgado has for three years been the scene of armed attacks by groups considered terrorists, attacks which have caused more than a thousand deaths and a humanitarian crisis with 250,000 internally displaced. Some of the attacks have been claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group, but the real motives behind them remain a matter of debate. The region is expected, in the coming years, to receive investment worth around US$50 billion (€42.6 billion) in natural gas projects led by US oil major Exxon Mobil and French Total, the latter already overseeing work underway on the ground.