Cet événement s’est déroulé exclusivement en allemand. La description n’est actuellement disponible qu’en allemand et en anglais. Nous essayons toujours d’élargir notre offre en langue française et vous remercions de votre compréhension.
Mozambique will hold presidential and parliamentary elections on 9 October. Provincial assemblies and governors of the country’s eleven provinces are also up for election. The incumbent president, Filipe Nyusi (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique, FRELIMO), is not allowed to stand for re-election after two terms in office. The 47-year-old David Chapo, current Governor of Inhambane Province, is entering the race on behalf of FRELIMO, which has ruled the country since independence from Portugal in 1975. Other presidential candidates are Ossufo Momade from the main opposition party Resistência Nacional Moçambicana (RENAMO), Lutero Simango from the Movimento Democrático d Moçambique (MDM) and 50-year-old Venâncio Mondlane, who is running as an independent and is backed by the Coligação Aliança Democrática (CAD) coalition. However, the latter was subsequently banned from the parliamentary and provincial elections by the National Electoral Commission (CNE).
The elections are taking place against a backdrop of major political and economic challenges. On the one hand, the country is still grappling with the aftermath of the 1977-1992 civil war between the former liberation movement FRELIMO and the rebel movement RENAMO, which flared up again in 2013, as well as a 1.2 billion US-dollar loan and corruption scandal involving the government. Second, attacks by the militant Islamist rebel group Ansar al Sunna, also known locally as Al-Shabaab, have been taking place in the northern province of Cabo Delgado since 2017. Thousands of people have been killed and hundreds of thousands have fled the region. French company TotalEnergies’ 23 billion US-dollar gas exploration project in Cabo Delgado has also been suspended as a result of the violence. Moreover, Mozambique is increasingly suffering from the effects of climate change and extreme weather conditions. The country, which is one of the four African countries in the so-called Climate Club along with Egypt, Kenya and Morocco, is pursuing an ambitious strategy for a socially just energy transition. The South-East African state is also working with Germany in this area. In June this year, Germany and Mozambique signed a climate and development partnership.
What is the current political and economic situation on the ground? What is the security situation in the country, particularly in the province of Cabo Delgado? What developments, both nationally, regionally and internationally, can be expected in the light of the election results? And what are the priorities for German-Mozambican cooperation, particularly with regard to the climate partnership?
We discussed these and other questions together with H.E. Ronald Münch, Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to Mozambique at the DAS Talk.
Moderation
Larissa Pflüger, Scientific Advisor for Public Relations and Political Communication as well as for Southern Africa, German Africa Foundation
Guest
H.E. Ronald Münch, Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany in Mozambique
About
H.E. Ronald Münch has been Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to Mozambique since August 2023. Previously, he was Head of the Department for and Global Affairs at the German Embassy in Mexico from 2020-2023 and Head of the Cultural Preservation Unit and Head of the Division for Science, Research and Higher Education at the Federal Foreign Office, Berlin, from 2016-2020. Prior to that, from 1992, he worked in various bilateral and multilateral functions at German missions abroad in Lithuania, Israel, the Netherlands, Ecuador and at the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin. After studying history, German, philosophy and English in Heidelberg and Berlin, he initially worked as a research assistant at the German Historical Museum in Berlin, the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn and the Ellis Island Immigration Museum in New York, among others.
