Mozambique: ADIN’s strategic plan will be presented to Council of Ministers by mid-month

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Mozambique: ADIN’s strategic plan will be presented to Council of Ministers by mid-month

8:30 CAT | 01 Nov 2021

FILE PHOTO - Armindo Ngunga. [File photo: Gabinete do Secretario de Estado do Niassa]

Mozambique’s Integrated Development Agency for the North (ADIN) will in November present to the government a strategic plan to relaunch the region after four years of armed insurgency.

“The commission of consultants should continue another 15 days to see if by mid-November we have the final version [of the document] to take to the Council of Ministers,” ADIN president Armindo Ngunga said on Thursday.

Ngunga was speaking in Pemba, the provincial capital of Cabo Delgado, at the end of an extraordinary ADIN meeting convened to validate the “strategy of resilience and integrated development”.

The document has been drafted and submitted to the provinces for consultation and “the work was well done”, added Ngunga, indicating long-term work supported by a preliminary five-year “buffer”.

The strategy, based “on peace, the well-being of the population and fighting conflicts”, draws on the experience of international organizations such as the United Nations and the European Union (EU) in other parts of the world.

Ngunga says this a working tool to “address several aspects”, with peace being a “fundamental element for everything we can think of in terms of development in the region”.

“We need to find a strategy to bring peace” to the northern region, “consolidating relationships between people” and consolidating “the capacity for trust” between communities, he said.

The support for projects is also part of the strategy. “We cannot expect [to receive] financing with empty hands, without an instrument, without a document,” such as the one about to be launched.

Ngunga says the strategy for the northern provinces (Niassa, Cabo Delgado and Nampula) should advance in parallel with the Cabo Delgado infrastructure reconstruction plan launched by the government in September and budgeted at €256 million.

Of that total, €170 million is earmarked for the implementation of short-term projects such as the restoration of public administration, health units, schools, energy, water supply and so on, resulting in the mobilisation of partners for financing.

So far, €86 million in support for the reconstruction plan has been announced by the World Bank.

ADIN was created in March 2020 by the Mozambican Council of Ministers to promote multiform actions aimed at the socioeconomic development of the provinces of Cabo Delgado, Niassa and Nampula, in northern Mozambique.

Among its objectives, the agency’s mission is to promote opportunities in regions affected by armed violence, especially for young people, with the aim of preventing them from being recruited by armed groups.

Cabo Delgado is a region rich in natural gas, but has been terrorised since 2017 by armed rebels, with some attacks claimed by the Islamic State extremist group.

The conflict has already caused more than 3,100 deaths, according to the ACLED conflict registration project, and more than 817,000 displaced, according to Mozambican authorities.

Since July, an offensive by government troops with the support of Rwanda, which was later joined by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has increased security, recovering several areas where there was a presence of rebels, namely the town of Mocímboa da Praia, which had been occupied since August 2020.

Source: Lusa