Mozambique and Tanzania intend to strengthen their bilateral relations in several areas with a focus on security and trade. In this sense, the President of the Republic, Filipe Nyusi, and his counterpart from Tanzania, Samia Suluhu, signed this morning in Maputo, two security agreements.

One of the memoranda is on Peace and Security and the other on Evacuation, also related to peace, and which, according to Nyusi, "is complementary to the first one."

"In addition to Tanzania's participation in the security process of combating terrorism as a member of SADC and SAMIM [joint regional force], there is a whole need to have bilateral cooperation [in the field of security]. And all kinds of cooperation in this area need a legal instrument that formalizes this participation, not only in the fight against terrorism because the security issues are huge," explained Filipe Nyusi, later limiting himself to advance that "the other [memorandum] is complementary to the first.

The President of the Republic was thus clarifying the decision reached by the two countries for Tanzanian troops to fight terrorism in the north of the country without being integrated into SAMIM.

Neither president said when and how many soldiers will be sent to Mozambique and for how long they will be allowed to stay on national territory.

On the other hand, given the interest in fortifying commercial relations, the Tanzanian President revealed that only one Mozambican company operates in that country and that trade between the nations has slowed down.

"My country's statistical agency showed that trade reduced from 2.5 billion shillings in 2020 to 56 million in 2021," Suluhu said, anticipating another decrease expected this year.

Filipe Nyusi explained that this drop in the commercial chart was due to several conjunctural factors and adversities, among them the covid-19 pandemic.

"That was one of the factors, but not the main one. There was a lack of containers internationally and the economic sector was depressed," he said, pointing to the presence of Tanzania at the last edition of FACIM as an intention to reverse the graph. But also, the two countries will promote economic forums "that will happen either on the sidelines of visits or organized at the level of chambers of commerce.

The Tanzanian Head of State stressed the need to do more work in the economic sector "to explore the investment potential between the countries, focusing on the areas of agriculture, agro-processing, mining, oil and gas."

For that ruler, the countries need to work more with each other. "We have not been working among ourselves. We are working with Asia and America. But now we have agreed to explore ways to trade with each other."

In the field of education, Samia Suluhu said that there may be exchanges of university students as well as expressed the desire to see Kiswahili taught in Mozambique "so that we can speak the same language.