More than 24 young people recently began preparing to apply for funding from the Nhluvuko project, financed by Mozal and managed by Gapi-SI.

On February 15, the first five credits were granted, ranging from 250,000 to one million meticais.

Gapi's director, Anabela Mucavele, said at the handover ceremony that "the fruits of this partnership, between a multinational aware of its corporate social responsibilities and a national development financial institution, serve as an example of how the private sector can lead development processes and complement the government's efforts towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals"

As part of its social and corporate responsibility, Mozal has entered into a partnership with Gapi which, as a development financial institution supervised by the Bank of Mozambique, combines business training services with the granting of loans and the management of credit portfolios.

Both institutions worked on the design of the project. It is scheduled to last five years, covering the districts of Matola-Rio and Boane and investing around 800,000 dollars in 165 to 170 small youth businesses.

"The loans are granted at an interest rate of 1% per month and are preceded by training, capacity building and technical assistance in business management, in order to make them more productive and sustainable," explained the project coordinator, Edwina Ferro.

The project's implementation methodology has a strong component of community involvement in the region covered.

In this regard, one of the managers of the Gapi team implementing the project, Ashley Massingue, said that "meetings are held in the neighborhoods to clarify the project and inform young people interested in improving their lives and their businesses".

Since the start of the project in September 2023, 43 neighborhoods have been covered in these two districts, receiving around 2,600 applications from potentially interested parties.

"The process includes a digitalized registration procedure for these applications and then selection involving interviews. It's a selection process to identify the candidates with the greatest potential and entrepreneurial mindset. Those selected go through a one-week training phase. In the first cycle, 50 were selected and in this second cycle another 24 have already been selected," said the project coordinator.

"To become eligible for funding, Gapi does not prioritize real guarantees on the part of these applicants and start-ups, but rather their character and the quality of their business proposal. But in the training process, they are warned that receiving a loan is a legal responsibility. Gapi's philosophy in this project is focused on the need to create entrepreneurs with a sense of responsibility and not simply recipients of donations," concluded Edwina.

Presiding over the ceremony to hand over the first loans on February 15, Manuel Simão Tule, Governor of Maputo Province, praised this partnership, saying that "projects of this nature satisfy us because they respond to our efforts as the Provincial Government to stimulate and give value to local content, as an instrument for promoting the competitiveness of MSMEs, training and certification of processes and products and increasing the proportion of use of local raw materials".

For his part, Samuel Samo Gudo, Mozal's CEO, said that his company "believes that the development of MSMEs is one of the key pillars for improving the quality of life of our communities, by growing the local economy, making it more robust, resilient and sustainable". Samo Gudo also saluted his partner Gapi, "for its openness and courage in embracing this noble mission". Mozal's CEO appealed to them not to see Nhluvuko as just another project in their lives, but as the "start of a journey of positive change in the management and development of your business"

Anabela Mucavele, from Gapi, invited "other partners to follow Mozal's example and embrace institutions with proven capacity and established credits, so that together we can multiply examples like this, of carrying out and implementing local content programs, as part of their social and corporate responsibility actions."

Gapi celebrates its 34th anniversary on March 1st and will mark this date with the launch of a platform it has named F4SD (Finance for Sustainable Development), to promote information and debate on the challenges of sustainable and inclusive development proposed by the United Nations.

Some examples of his interventions in partnership with large companies such as Caminhos de Ferro de Moçambique, Total Energies, Vale and others can be evaluated and discussed on this platform.