Mozambique: ANE needs 800 million meticais to guarantee accessibility of roads in Nampula
FILE - For illustration purposes only. [File photo: Society for the Promotion of Guinea Bissau /Facebook]
Guinea-Bissau’s foreign minister announced on Tuesday that, “if all goes well”, Mozambique will send a ship to Bissau to help dredge the city’s commercial harbour in two or three months.
Carlos Pinto Pereira made the announcement while taking stock of Guinean President Umaro Sissoco Embaló’s state visit to Mozambique, during which he said the Maputo government had declared its willingness to cooperate with Guinea-Bissau “in various areas”.
The foreign ministery pointed out that Mozambique was “surprised” that the visit “had not taken place more recently” and said that “exchanges between the two countries should be normal”.
The Maputo government told Sissoco Embaló that it was willing to help dredge the port of Bissau, develop partnerships between entrepreneurs and train Guinean executives, said Carlos Pinto Pereira.
With regard to the commercial port of Bissau, which has not been dredged for over 40 years, the Guinean government official said that Mozambique has the capacity to change the situation, given what Embaló’s delegation saw in the port of Maputo.
“The port of Maputo is the most efficient in southern Africa. We were told that they can dispatch a container in five minutes, while in neighbouring South Africa it takes 19 hours,” noted the head of Guinean diplomacy.
Carlos Pinto Pereira said that some workers from the commercial port of Bissau or interested students would be sent for training in the port of Maputo “soon”.
Mozambique has also made its police academy, nursing school and the possibility of training public administration staff available to Guinea-Bissau.
For each of these sectors, Guinea-Bissau will be sending five people to Mozambique in the near future, Pinto Pereira said, noting that this number will be increased in the future.
During the visit by the Guinean head of state, the two countries also discussed the possibility of Mozambican entrepreneurs co-operating with those from Guinea-Bissau to process cashew nuts.
The two countries are the main producers of cashew nuts in Africa.
Guinea-Bissau produces around 400,000 tonnes of cashew nuts every year and more than half are exported raw, a situation that Carlos Pinto Pereira hopes to see reversed through local processing with the help of Mozambique, starting next year.
After Maputo, the Guinean President made a short visit to Malawi, where he received a promise from the authorities to help train staff in fish farming, said Pinto Pereira.
Umaro Sissoco Embaló was also on a working visit to Tanzania and received that country’s openness to training Guinean staff in various areas, said the head of Guinean diplomacy.
Carlos Pinto Pereira said that meetings of the so-called “Great Mixed Commission” would be held to schedule the cooperation actions to be carried out with various countries, starting next week with Gambia, in Bissau, and then with Morocco, in Rabat.
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