Africa-Press – Mozambique. Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi on Monday called for genuine partnership between sovereign peoples and states without any unilateral imposition of policies on developing countries.
He was speaking in Maputo at the opening of the 61st session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States ((OACPS).
Nyusi said implementation of political and economic reforms called for “smart partnerships resting on dialogue”.
“The relation between countries should be based on mutual respect and reciprocity of benefits”, he insisted. “There are various examples of how the unilateral imposition of policies can compromise the goals of poverty reduction and the creation of a better world in which nobody is left behind”.
He cited the disaster of the liberalization of the Mozambican cashew processing industry which the World Bank imposed on the Mozambican government in the late 1990s. Subsequent studies showed that this policy, far from benefitting the farmers who grew the cashew nuts, virtually wiped out the domestic processing industry, impoverishing all the households linked to this sector.
Although the World Bank eventually apologised for its blunder, the negative effects are still being felt today, Nyusi said, on both Mozambican households and the Mozambican economy as a whole, given the weight that cashew processing once held in the country’s balance of payments.
“World Bank policies led to the collapse of cashew processing in Mozambique”, said the President. “The direct producers suffered a decline in their household income, and thousands of processing workers lost their jobs”.
Speaking to about 300 parliamentarians from across the globe, Nyusi called on the ACP-European Union Parliamentary Assembly to pay particular attention to climate change, noting that Mozambique has been repeatedly buffeted by extreme climate events such as droughts, floods and cyclones.
The head of the delegation of the European Parliament to the ACP-EU, Carlos Zorrinho, said that crises such as wars and climate change can only be faced through multilateral blocs requiring greater dialogue between peoples and states.
“Only through blocs of this nature can we, for example, confront the problems of Cabo Delgado (the northern Mozambican province blighted by islamist terrorism)”, he said. “Terrorism is one of the many problems which requires a multilateral response”.
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