31 May 2008
Yokohama — The Japanese government will finance the complete rehabilitation and tarring of the 400 kilometre long road between the northern Mozambican cities of Nampula and Cuamba, Mozambican President Armando Guebuza announced on Friday.
He was speaking to Mozambican journalists shortly after the end of the fourth Japan-Africa summit (TICAD IV) in the Japanese city of Yokohama.
Guebuza said that the money to finance the road will come from the four billion or so dollars which Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fakuda announced that Japan will provide to African countries in grants and soft loans over the next five years.
Mozambique will also benefit, together with Zambia, from Japanese support for electrification in these two member states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the cost of which is estimated at 760 million dollars.
Guebuza declared that he was very pleased by the willingness shown by the Japanese authorities to support the development of Africa. "The experience I have with the Japanese", he added, "is that when they make a promise, they always honour it".
He added that Japan had the merit of being the first developed country to break the habit of distrusting Africa, and opted to set up a forum to study, together with African leaders, the best ways of supporting the development of the continent. Japan took that decision 15 years ago, in 1993, recalled Guebuza, when it was fashionable to speak disparagingly of Africa, even among the multilateral institutions that deal closely with African governments.
"That's why I think that what is most important is not just the money that Japan has promised to channel towards our development, but this growing understanding of Africa that is now being cemented", said Guebuza.
He noted that all the delegates to TICAD IV, whether they came from Africa, or from the developed world, stressed that more support should be given to the African continent. This gave him hope that the world now understands Africa, after decades of misunderstandings that had inhibited investment.
Guebuza also told the reporters that he had met with his South African counterpart, Thabo Mbeki, to discuss the wave of mob violence against Mozambicans and other foreign immigrants living in South Africa.
He said Mbeki had assured him that the situation was now under control and that sooner rather than later security would be re-established for everyone. Mbeki guaranteed that all immigrants would feel safe and that such disgraceful scenes would never occur in South Africa again.
Guebuza said that SADC leaders in Yokohama took advantage of the summit to discuss other pressing problems of southern Africa, notably the crisis in Zimbabwe, though he revealed no details of these discussions.
Gm/pf (453)
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