Sao Tome: Government wants more economic ties with Mozambique, visa waiver is a start

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Sao Tome: Government wants more economic ties with Mozambique, visa waiver is a start

12:32 CAT | 26 Jul 2022

Image: Lusa

Sao Tome’s foreign affairs and cooperation minister, Edite Ten Jua, said on Monday that her country wants to enter an era of economic cooperation with Mozambique, aiming to capitalise on the solid bilateral political and historical ties.

“The visa waiver has several dimensions. It has the tourism dimension, which allows and enables us to visit each other. It has a business component, insofar as it facilitates greater mobility for businesspeople,” said the Sao Tomean leader in an interview published today by daily newspaper Notícias, the most widely circulated newspaper in Mozambique, referring to the recent signing of the visa waiver agreement between the two countries.

The Sao Tomean head of diplomacy said that Sao Tome and Maputo now have bases to enter a phase of greater economic and trade exchange, taking advantage of their potential in various areas.

“Another space has been created where intervention is possible. This will facilitate small traders and the more informal economy, which has its weight, its great importance. This possibility of people coming to Mozambique or going to Sao Tome to identify eventual market niches, of commercial exchanges, has its advantage and importance”, Edite Ten Jua said.

The official pointed to her country’s experience in producing and exporting coffee and the fact that Mozambique has also started to focus on this product as a field in which the two countries can cooperate in the economic area.

Fishing, she continued, is another sphere in which the two countries can interact.

“There has to be more stimulus so that we can consume ‘Made in Africa’. What is produced in Africa has to be disseminated more among African countries,” said the diplomat, who lived and worked in Mozambique.

In the political area, there is solid cooperation, catapulted by the historical ties derived from the fact that the two countries were colonised by Portugal and belong to the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) and the African Portuguese Speaking Countries (PALOP).

Edite Ten Jua noted that many Sao Tomean officials did their university studies in Mozambique and many others continue to graduate in the Southern African country.

Source: Lusa