In recent years, news outlets have advertised “the Rise of Africa,” suggesting that sub-Saharan Africa is at a crossroads of modernity. In this interview, the Ambassador of the Republic of Mozambique to the U.S., His Excellency Carlos dos Santos, discusses the Rise of Africa from the Mozambican perspective and addresses modern challenges unique to Africa. To meet the needs of their growing population, Mozambique has embarked on economic development projects and education reform; the Ambassador references each as key to ensuring a prosperous future for Mozambique and its neighbors.

2:35pm EST, November 1st 2019

Corson: Africa’s population is expected to quadruple by 2100 to 4.4 billion people; as Africa grows, issues such as disease, conflict, and poverty may become more prevalent.  What are the most important initiatives that Mozambique has taken to preemptively address and combat issues pertaining to population growth?

dos Santos: Mozambique has been developing strategies, plans, and programs to combat poverty.  We have 5-year plans for the development of the country that are geared towards: first, human development and education, second, health care, third, generating economic growth and development.  The government of Mozambique has selected four sectors of development. First are agricultural, and agrobusiness to add value to the products that the people of Mozambique are producing. The second area is energy, because we have rivers and hydroelectric dams that supply energy to Mozambique and South Africa. The third area of great potential for accelerated development is tourism, because we have a very long coastline with pristine, white sand beaches, and the Bazaruto islands along the coast.  When you go into the inner part of Mozambique you have game parks, game reserves, historical sites, and a rich culture, so you can enjoy ecotourism, cultural tourism, sea and sand, and gaming; we have worked hard to develop these things. The fourth area is putting all of these aspects together with infrastructure and development. We have worked hard to create good roads, bridges, airports, ports, information, and communications. These examples form part of the development strategies of the country.  

Of course, we do these in partnership with the international community.  We also partner with countries from the region, such as SADC, the South African Development Community, for the sub region of Southern Africa.  On the continental level, we work under the umbrella of the African Union (AU), to address the challenges of poverty, population growth, how we can feed our people, how we generate employment.  We also address challenges of peace and security through mechanisms that are established within the framework of SADC and the AU to help all the countries of Africa find African solutions to African problems. 

Corson: In what specific ways would you like to see international partners help in Africa?

dos Santos: I think that international partners can help by listening more to African voices; listening to their aspirations, their views on what should be done for African development, and then collaborating with Africans to help achieve those goals.  The main idea is to enable Africans to achieve the goals that they set for themselves, rather than setting terms, saying you can only develop if you do this or that. I think that Africans know what they want and they have put some of these things on paper, like in Agenda 2063.  At the national level, you find that African countries have national strategies and visions for their development; you have those that still needs high levels of foreign aid, and others that need more trade, more business, more investment. To this end, we encourage partnerships between international companies and multinational corporations with local companies.  It doesn’t help to say that local companies don’t have capacity because we need to build that capacity. Those companies that are big today started small, so if you help local companies, they can also grow to a level that is good for partnership.

Corson: Between 2000 and 2010, Mozambique increased primary school enrolment by 35 percentage points.  How does this reflect the Mozambican government’s view of the importance of education in Africa

dos Santos: The first thing that I should say is that education is our top priority. When I visited [UVA’s] Rotunda, I read some of the quotes from Thomas Jefferson.  He spoke about education and information and believed those are the things that will help countries develop. If you have a lot of people that are educated, then you will be developing.  We share that perception, and we are currently trying to tackle the challenge of female education. Due to cultural barriers and cultural mindsets, girls, not only in Mozambique but in all of Africa, have been seen as needing to be educated to be wives.  However, things are changing for the better, and we are promoting the education of more girls. When given the opportunity to study and attend school, they are good students, and they do very well; our work is about changing the mindsets and providing them with the opportunity.  The positive changes that you see in terms of access in Mozambique have occurred because the government has been working on encouraging and enabling access to as many people as possible, and trying to reach our goals of quality education for all. We are looking at the curriculum of the schools and learning from others countries’ education reform methods, studies, and the science of education.  These are constant areas of conversation in the country, especially for the government of Mozambique.

Corson: How have cultural and language differences in Africa presented unique challenges?

dos Santos: I think that the main challenge has been inter-ethnic conflict, in some places, very violent conflict.  In Mozambique we are lucky in the sense that the freedom fighters for the independence of Mozambique tried to resolve the problem by saying that they were fighting for Mozambique, not for the northern, central or southern ethnic groups.  Although you did have those movements emerging at the time, they were all brought together to fight for Mozambique as a country. Then they promoted intermarriages and oneness—the idea that we are all Mozambican—and that has succeeded. We still have pride and belong to our certain tribe, or certain ethnic group, but that’s not a reason for anyone to feel superior or inferior to others.  For instance, in the electoral legislation of the country, it is not allowed to register a party on the basis of race, religion, region, color, or any other similar classification. We did have one instance at the very beginning when a party wanted to register on the basis of one religion; it was not allowed. This has helped to create the sense that all parties are national parties, and anyone who wants to follow the vision of that party should follow it on the basis of a national perception of Mozambique.