8 March 2004
Maputo — The German ambassador to Mozambique, Ulf- Dieter Klemm, on Monday decorated Filipe Couto, Vice-Chancellor of the Catholic University of Mozambique, with the Grand Cross of Merit, awarded to Couto last December by German President Johannes Rau.
Klemm said the honour paid tribute "to a man of great merit, not only because of his scientific and university life in Mozambique, but also as a tireless architect of cooperation between Mozambique and Germany".
The ambassador described Couto as "a firm friend of Germany in Mozambique", and "a great creator of cultural and scientific interchanges".
The 65 year old Couto was born in the northern Mozambican province of Niassa. He entered the catholic priesthood, and undertook religious and philosophical studies in Italy and Germany in the 1960s. He took his doctorate in theology in the University of Munster.
"His insertion into German academic life did not mean that the student Couto had forgotten his roots, or that he was not participating in the movement to free his motherland", said Klemm.
Armed with his doctorate, Couto could have embarked on a life of teaching in Europe. Instead he opted to become a Mozambican exile in Tanzania, where he worked with the liberation movement, Frelimo, and came to know many of the future leaders of Mozambique.
After Mozambican independence, Couto returned to Germany to resume his studies, and took a second doctorate, this time in social sciences. In 1981, he taught church history in Tanzania, and between 1984 and 1987 worked as a parish priest in the northern Mozambican province of Nampula.
Couto taught philosophy and theology at the Missionary Institute of London in the late 1980s, and then returned to Tanzania, to teach mathematical logic at Morogoro.
In 1996, Couto was appointed Vice-Chancellor of the newly created Catholic University, based in the central Mozambican city of Beira. Klemm said the rapid growth of this private university was due, not only to the academic capacities of Couto, "but to his management skills and his indefatigable energy".
Couto's links with Germany have helped him raise funds for the university. One of the institutions that has provided money is the Merkur Bank of Munich, which provided the initial loan for setting up the university's medical faculty in Beira.
The bank's chairman, Siegfried Lingel, who is also Mozambique's honorary Consul in Munich, told the Monday ceremony, "Granting these funds was done on the basis of trust, and that trust was justified. The university paid off the loan as planned, and is continuing to develop the medical faculty in an exemplary way".
Lingel added that the Merkur Bank was now prepared to finance the initial phase of an agronomy faculty in the northern town of Cuamba.
Couto himself stressed his university's willingness to work with German institutions across the political spectrum. It would not be tied to either the right or the left, but worked with both the left leaning Friedrich Ebert Foundation, and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which is linked to the right-wing Christian Democratic Party.
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