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Lu\u00eds Nhachote<\/p>\n
Two months after Rwanda sent a 1000-strong military force to Mozambique, that country\u2019s President, Paul Kagame, spoke about it publicly for the first time in a lengthy interview last Sunday with state broadcaster RBA.<\/p>\n
In an apparent response to a range of articles questioning Rwanda\u2019s motivation for intervening in Cabo Delgado \u2014 and whether it is being financed by a third party \u2014 Kagame said that “no one is sponsoring” the military support that Rwanda is providing in northern Mozambique.<\/p>\n
The intervention is paid for entirely out of Rwanda\u2019s own resources, Kagame said, answering a question about rumours that finance is coming from France or the French oil and gas company TotalEnergies, whose liquefied natural gas project in Cabo Delgado has been on hold since an attack on the town of Palma in March, that concentrated minds from Paris and Maputo.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo far, until now, we are using our means,\u201d Kagame said. \u201cWe have decent means, which we are also ready to share with friends and brothers and sisters. So there is nobody who sponsored us for this,\u201d he continued. \u201cBut I think the outcomes and the cause are much much bigger than the money we have spent.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve been reading in the media people questioning, why Rwanda in Mozambique,\u201d Kagame said. One such article was published by <\/a>Zitamar News<\/em><\/a> on 31 August, which argued that the intervention \u201cis unlikely to come without some quid pro quo for the aspiring African powerhouse.\u201d<\/p>\n The intervention followed a trip to Kigali by French president Emmanuel Macron, who said Rwanda is \u201cat the heart of [the] capacity that France may have to help bring out regional responses\u201d to crises such as that in Cabo Delgado. On the same trip, France offered Rwanda a \u20ac60 million soft loan to help deal with the coronavirus pandemic, and a \u20ac1.5m grant to support sports in Rwandan schools. French public investment bank Bpifrance also signed three agreements to cooperate with Rwanda\u2019s sovereign wealth fund.<\/p>\n \u201cEven if Rwanda is nominally funding this operation itself, Western aid, spent in areas such as health and education, effectively frees up the funding needed for this kind of operation,\u201d Michela Wrong, author of a recent book about Rwanda (which Kagame also criticised during his 5 September press conference), told Zitamar<\/em>.<\/p>\n And speaking to Voice of America<\/a> on 9 September, Mozambican military analyst Albino Forquilha said that Rwanda\u2019s denial that it is being financed from Paris is \u201csimply an exercise in protecting questions of sovereignty.\u201d<\/p>\n The speed of Rwanda\u2019s response has also raised questions \u2013 going into the field ahead of the joint Southern African Development Community (SADC) force, called SAMIM. The then South African Defense Minister, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, said it was \u201cregrettable that this deployment takes place before the deployment of SADC troops,\u201d saying \u201cone would expect Rwanda to go to Mozambique in the context of a mandate given by the heads of state of the SADC region\u201d.<\/p>\n But, Kagame said on Sunday, \u201cif somebody has his house on fire and is calling for help, I’ve never heard of a situation where the one who arrives there first is questioned: \u2018Why did you arrive so fast, to put out the fire?\u2019 I’ve never heard of this.\u201d<\/p>\n Hope for the gas project<\/strong><\/p>\n Kagame did, however, give a nod to the gas project and the importance of restoring security so that it can continue. \u201cI hope and I’m sure the Mozambicans are hoping that the people will come back to work [on the LNG project] because it means a lot to their economy and to their development,\u201d he said \u2014 before repeating that \u201cwe are there on the request of the Mozambicans\u201d.<\/p>\n If security conditions continue to improve in Cabo Delgado, TotalEnergies\u2019 project could restart operations in 12-18 months, according to African Development Bank president Akinwumi Adesina, who told Reuters<\/a> that the temporary suspension of the project should not affect the long-term viability of producing liquefied natural gas.<\/p>\n “The return of security in that place will give assurances to Total and others to return,” he said. “In one year to 18 months, I expect it to be stabilised enough to get back on track.”<\/p>\n Mozambique\u2019s Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, Max Tonela, told Maputo-based newspaper \u201cO Pa\u00eds\u201d<\/a> in August that the restoration of security conditions in Cabo Delgado is crucial for the recovery of investors in the natural gas area in Palma. Max Tonela adds that the development of the situation will determine when and how work should be resumed.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are hopeful that this performance of the Defense and Security Forces continues so that the recovery takes place beyond Moc\u00edmboa da Praia and all the affected districts, also ensuring the population’s return to their normal activity,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n “We will follow the development of situations and we will be able to discuss issues of how and when the works will be resumed”, added Tonela, indicating that the resumption of gas projects depends on the restoration of peace in the province of Cabo Delgado.<\/p>\n The armed conflict between military forces and insurgents in the northern province of Cabo Delgado has already caused more than 3,100 deaths, according to the Cabo Ligado conflict observatory, run by ACLED and Zitamar News, and more than 817,000 people displaced, according to Mozambican authorities.<\/p>\n *This article was first published by https:\/\/mg.co.za\/thecontinent\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lu\u00eds Nhachote Two months after Rwanda sent a 1000-strong military force to Mozambique, that country\u2019s President, Paul Kagame, spoke about it publicly for the first time in a lengthy interview last Sunday with state broadcaster RBA. In an apparent response to a range of articles questioning Rwanda\u2019s motivation for intervening in Cabo Delgado \u2014 and […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[275],"tags":[276],"rttpg_featured_image_url":null,"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"Reda\u00e7\u00e3o CJIMOZ","author_link":"https:\/\/cjimoz.org.mz\/news\/en\/author\/hcuambe\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"Sociedade<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"Lu\u00eds Nhachote Two months after Rwanda sent a 1000-strong military force to Mozambique, that country\u2019s President, Paul Kagame, spoke about it publicly for the first time in a lengthy interview last Sunday with state broadcaster RBA. In an apparent response to a range of articles questioning Rwanda\u2019s motivation for intervening in Cabo Delgado \u2014 and…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjimoz.org.mz\/news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2675"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjimoz.org.mz\/news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjimoz.org.mz\/news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjimoz.org.mz\/news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjimoz.org.mz\/news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2675"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cjimoz.org.mz\/news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2677,"href":"https:\/\/cjimoz.org.mz\/news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2675\/revisions\/2677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjimoz.org.mz\/news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjimoz.org.mz\/news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjimoz.org.mz\/news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}