Mozambique: State, Portugal, Mota-Engil to restore 500-year-old chapel in Mozambique Island

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Mozambique: State, Portugal, Mota-Engil to restore 500-year-old chapel in Mozambique Island

11:48 CAT | 16 Feb 2023

File photo: Lusa

The governments of Portugal and Mozambique and construction company Mota-Engil have signed a memorandum of understanding for the rehabilitation of the Chapel of Nossa Senhora do Baluarte, on Mozambique Island, the oldest masonry building on the Indian Ocean coast.

“We, starting today (Wednesday), have a great responsibility, to rehabilitate this chapel with the robustness it needs to last for another 500 years,” that is, as many years as it completed in 2022, Aníbal Leite, executive director of Mota-Engil Africa, told Lusa.

The robustness is needed to face cyclones, which characterise the region, as happened a year ago when cyclone Gombe destroyed houses and infrastructure on the island and in 2019 when cyclone Kenneth also hit the region, leaving the chapel badly damaged.

The company will carry out the work at cost price, framing it in its social responsibility actions, for an amount that is still being assessed in technical terms, but which is expected to start in May, Aníbal Leite explained.

Until then, Mota-Engil will mobilise and train workers on Mozambique Island.

The Manuel António da Mota Foundation, founder of the company, will at the same time make a monetary contribution to the requalification.

The work should take “six to eight months”, given the “complexity” of some details and material requirements, he said.

The chapel is classified heritage, the only example of Manueline architecture in Mozambique, a building erected in 1522 by the Portuguese armada on their way to India and which is within the perimeter of the Sao Sebastiao fortress.

Mozambique Island was declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in 1991 and the Mozambican mMnister of Culture, Eldevina Materula, hopes that Mota-Engil’s action extends beyond the rehabilitation of the chapel – an extension provided for in the memorandum signed on Wednesday.

The Minister called the signing “a gesture of friendship, brotherhood and cooperation” that shows “the common will” to continue “on this path” of requalification with the expectation that it will be “long”.

“I hope you have seen the size of this fortress. And it doesn’t end there: the island is much more than the fortress,” she said in a relaxed tone when thanking Aníbal Leite for the partnership and after signing the document alongside Francisco André, the Portuguese Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, who is visiting Mozambique.

Camões – Institute for Cooperation and Language maintains a cooperation centre in several areas on Mozambique Island and will support the rehabilitation of the chapel, at Mozambique’s request.

Francisco André explained to Lusa, about the partnership with Mota-Engil, that “the Mozambican side identified the need to find a private partner with experience and capacity to carry out” this activity, given the “imminent danger” of the chapel’s foundations collapsing.

“In this dialogue Mota-Engil appears as a private partner available to participate” and that does so “under its social responsibility” with “a financial contribution to support the costs of the work itself,” he said.

“Portugal will do as it always does in its cooperation with Mozambique: we have found the project and now we are settling the details of our financial support with the Mozambican authorities”, which is “the owner of the work” that will talk to the contractor – a “negotiation to which Portugal is completely unrelated”, the minister clarified.

He concluded: “What we did was answer yes to Mozambique and show our willingness to financially support this project which we feel is important”.

Source: Lusa