Tete El Dorado

Mozambican experts in the extractive industry say that, 16 years on, Vale’s operations in the country have generated more losses than gains, and that there was no way Tete could be a Mozambican ‘El Dorado’, because the Mozambican government had no plan to truly develop the province.According to economist Thomas Selemane, the large capital movements engendered by mining companies operating in the country were the result of an international dynamic that Mozambique, for its part, was unable to internalise, with the country failing to build any agenda to control the dynamics of extractive activity.

The economist highlights as one of the major problems the fact that the Mozambican government never outlined strategies from the point of view of development alternatives.

“There was never a national discussion about the different development alternatives. The country made itself available to receive investments from coal investors without internally there having been any genuinely Mozambican discussion that could put into perspective the problems that extraction brings, and all the attendant consequences,” Selemane explained.In a similar vein, researcher Boaventura Monjane says that what was lost in Tete through the actions of the extractive industry is more than what was gained.“Tete did not turn out to be an ‘El Dorado’ [the fabled land of riches] because extraction, in its essence, when it happens in peripheral countries like Mozambique, ends up not benefiting other sectors of national life,” Monjane says.“What was lost in Tete ends up being greater than that which was won,” he added, citing loss of biodiversity, loss of means of subsistence and loss of employment, among others, as consequences of mining in Mozambique.The two experts were speaking on the STV’s Noite Informativa programme on Tuesday.Watch the STV Noite Informativa. Debate with Thomas Selemane and Boaventura Mojane, moderated by Jeremias Langa about Tete and the extractive industries in Mozambique starts at around 24.40.