Africa-Press – Mozambique. Mozambican President Daniel Chapo on Tuesday launched a Fund for Women’s Empowerment, known as Empodera.
Marking Mozambican Women’s Day, celebrated every year on 7 April, Chapo said “Empodera is an initiative that responds to one of the commitments taken by our country: that of promoting women’s economic autonomy, expanding their access to opportunities, supporting women’s productive initiatives, and creating conditions for more women to pass from a situation of vulnerability to prosperity, with dignity and hope”.
He added that the Empodera programme also enshrines a commitment to combat domestic violence, gender-based violence and the murder of women.
“Our objective is clear”, said Chapo. “We want women to be economically strengthened and socially protected. We want girls with guaranteed rights, and we want society that does not accept violence as fate or silence as a response”.
“We are banking on better conditions so that each woman and each girl may live in safety, dignity and hope”, the President declared.
The promotion of the rights of women and girls “should be understood as a condition for peace, for national unity, for reconciliation, for poverty reduction and for the construction of a fairer and more developed Mozambique”, Chapo added.
He recalled that the country’ first President, Samora Machel, had once declared “the emancipation of women is not an act of charity: it is a necessity of the revolution, a guarantee of its continuity and the condition for its triumph”.
Chapo said he was sure “there will be no sustainable development, no lasting peace, and no shared prosperity while barriers persist that prevent women from fully exercising their rights”.
“We want a society in which men and women achieve their potential and participate in equality of dignity and opportunities”, he declared. “For us, the promotion of Mozambican women is a question of justice, democracy, development and the future of the nation”.
Chapo noted that major advances in the empowerment of women have already been made: thus, there is almost parity between the sexes in Mozambican secondary education (49.9 per cent of secondary students are girls), and, in 2025, 97 per cent of all recorded births took place in health units.
“No society will be truly free while its women are not fully respected”, said Chapo. “No economy will be genuinely inclusive while its women do not have equitable access to opportunities. And no democracy will be truly solid, while there remain silences imposed by fear, by dependence or by discrimination”.
