Nyusi calls for strengthened relations with Cuba

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Nyusi calls for strengthened relations with Cuba

7:57 CAT | 19 Jun 2017

Radio Habana Cuba / President Nyusi with Cuban president Raul Castro on Saturday in Havana

Mozambican President Flipe Nyusi on Friday stressed the importance of relations between Mozambique and Cuba, and called for them to be continually strengthened.

He was speaking to reporters on the first day of a state visit to Cuba, after laying a wreath at the Jose Marti memorial in Havana. This square also contains busts of African revolutionary leaders, including the founder and first President of the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo), Eduardo Mondlane, and the first President of independent Mozambique, Samora Machel.

“We are paying homage to those who had the vision to liberate Africa and to liberate Cuba”, said Nyusi. “We are here to restate our relations of friendship and to say that we shall increasingly strengthen them”.

Nyusi recalled that Mozambique and Cuba fought together for liberation, and stand together today in the fight for the development and prosperity of their peoples.

He thanked the Cuban Institute for Africa for organizing the ceremony, on the day in which the uprising of South African school students in Soweto against apartheid in 1976 is commemorated, and which is now celebrated as African Children’s Day.

“Represented in this square are those who worked for the future of children, and we are here to reaffirm that the work they did and the vision they had were not in vain”, declared Nyusi.

Relations between Mozambique and Cuba were established shortly after the foundation of Frelimo in 1962, and greatly expanded after Mozambican independence in 1975. In the late 1970s the government of Samora Machel sent 3,700 young Mozambican for training in Cuba in various fields, at a time when Mozambique was desperately short of trained staff.

Also on Friday, Nyusi visited the Cuban Centre of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, which undertakes research into human and animal health, and produces vaccines and other medicines.

Source: AIM