23 July 2008
Maputo — Mozambican Prime Minister Luisa Diogo on Wednesday swore into office Danilo Nala as the General Director of the newly created Office of the Accelerated Development Economic Areas (GAZEDA).
Diogo said that GAZEDA has been established "to promote and coordinate all activities related with the creation, development and management of Special Economic Zones and Industrial Free Zones".
Such special zones are set up to attract investors. Diogo said they were intended "to promote the accelerated development of regions with great economic potential, covering all social and economic activities". This also involved creating the infrastructures required for sustainable development "with the consequent increase in jobs and improved health and sanitation conditions for the public".
Nala, she added, now had the task of developing Special Economic Zones throughout the country - but she laid particular stress on the Nacala Special Economic Zone, in the northern province of Nampula. Work here, Diogo said, involved expanding the port of Nacala (often described as the best deep water port on the East African coast), converting the Nacala air base into a civilian airport, and rebuilding the northern railway line through Nampula and Niassa provinces.
Diogo expected the Nacala Special Economic Zone "to attract national and foreign direct investment, strengthen exports, develop a network of infrastructures, and improve living conditions and the quality of public services".
Sworn in at the same ceremony was Rafael Massinga, as general director of a new education institution, the Higher Polytechnic Institute in the central province of Manica.
Diogo said the expansion of higher education to provinces which still lacked university-level institutions was part of the government's ten year Higher Education Strategic Plan. The role of the polytechnic institutes, she added, was "to train enterprising professionals in areas relevant to the dynamic of the Mozambican labour market", and "to serve as centres of excellence in training innovative young professionals who, based on the real needs of society, will promote rapid economic growth".
These institutes would also be centres of information and technology that Mozambican industry, agriculture and local communities could turn to.
"The mission of a higher polytechnic institute", Diogo stressed, "is to contribute, through technical and professional education and the provision of services, to the development of the local communities, the region and the country, thus contributing to the struggle against poverty".
Diogo also swore into office Guides Cossa and Jose Simao, as director and deputy director of the Higher School of Nautical Sciences, an upgrading of the existing Maputo Nautical School.
This school, the Prime Minister said, must "provide the country with skilled staff who can overcome the adversities presented by the sea, turning it into a pole of development for Mozambique, a country which has about 3,000 kilometres of coastline".
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