Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pledged Thursday to help Mozambique counter the jihadist insurgency in the north of the country. Mozambique’s northernmost gas-rich province of Cabo Delgado is battling an insurgency led by militants linked to the Islamic State group.
“Japan will help financially in the fight against terrorism,” Kishida said at a press conference in the capital Maputo, the last stop on his Africa tour. “Security is paramount to the operations of Japanese companies in the north,” he added.
Mozambique has placed high hopes on large natural gas deposits – the largest discovered south of the Sahara – found in the Muslim-majority northern province in 2010. If all the fields are exploited, Mozambique could become one of the world’s ten largest gas exporting countries, according to estimates. But the insurgency of the past five years, which has killed more than 4,600 people, has cast doubt on the project.
Japanese conglomerate Mitsui has a 20% stake in a $20 billion (€18 billion) gas project led by French giant TotalEnergies, which has been suspended since 2021 following a jihadist attack on the nearby coastal town of Palma. Last week, Mozambique’s president, Filipe Nyusi, declared that the conditions were right to resume work, but TotalEnergies has not yet committed to restarting the project.
Mozambique’s Foreign Minister Veronica Macamo announced that Japan would provide the African nation with air navigation equipment worth about $22.5 million (20.4 million euros) and a surveillance vessel worth $830,000 (750,000 euros).
Japan is the world’s largest importer of liquefied natural gas(LNG), a title it normally shares with China. Fumio Kishida said Tokyo intends to deepen its relationship with Maputo “especially in the energy sector. He also visited Ghana, Egypt and Kenya.
