Ireland will give an extra €5.5 million to support its health, education and peace-building initiatives in Mozambique, the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin has said.
Mr Martin announced the additional financial aid, which brings to €27 million the figure the Government will provide this year to the country, during his trip to South Africa and Mozambique this week, where he visited economic, cultural, development and peace-building projects that Ireland supports. He also held talks with the presidents of both countries as well as other government ministers, and engaged in trade and cultural events.
During Mr Martin’s trip to Mozambique, which was the first by an Irish foreign minister in two decades, he visited schools and villages in Inhambane Province, where Ireland has had a development presence since 1996.
Speaking afterwards he said one of the most heartening parts of the visits related to the installation of a solar-powered water system that Ireland financed in the province as it brings safe, clean underground water to rural people’s taps. “I think this [initiative] points the way to the future in terms of using renewables to really advance the quality of people’s water supply,” he told The Irish Times.
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Mr Martin said another aspect of the trip that impressed him was the progress Mozambique has made in building its peace between the government and Renamo, a former rebel group.
The government signed a peace deal with Renamo in 2019 after the group had returned to armed conflict three years earlier. In June it announced the completion of its disarmament and demobilisation phase, which Ireland has supported through funding of €4 million.
On Friday Mr Martin announced a further €1 million to support the reintegration phase of the peace process. “I think our work with the peace process is one of our better-kept secrets. We were one of the first [countries] in to support it and we are going to continue,” he said before adding Ireland could learn from Mozambique.
“I thought the transparency [of the decommissioning process] was very powerful as it was done in public. Also interesting is the post-conflict process, which is going through the department of education rather than justice. So the idea of peace and reconciliation is on the school curriculum.”
Earlier this week Mr Martin was in South Africa, where he held what he described as useful talks with president Cyril Ramaphosa and foreign minister Nadali Pandor on the Russia-Ukraine war and the recent African peace mission to end the conflict.
South Africa has remained non-aligned in the conflict to date, which has drawn criticism from some countries, particularly the US.
Mr Martin said it was important when EU leaders come to Africa they do not lecture their counterparts on issues but rather have genuine discussions. “This allowed me to give the real perspective of the EU, particularly countries in eastern Europe in respect to the existential nature of this crisis, and I think they got it.”
In addition to the diplomatic engagements Mr Martin gave the inaugural Charlotte Maxeke-Mary Robinson lecture at the University of the Western Cape and opened an exhibition on 25 years of the Belfast Agreement. He also opened the Kirby Engineering Group’s new South African offices in Cape Town. The Limerick company expects to create 30 jobs locally by the end of 2023.
