The First Lady of the Republic, Gueta Selemane Chapo, on an official visit to Zanzibar, on Friday strengthened cooperation ties with the autonomous region of Tanzania.

The focus of the meeting was to exchange experiences and strengthen joint initiatives to support children, the elderly and women, with an emphasis on the fight against domestic violence and femicide.

Gueta Chapo's visit to the influential Maisha Bora Foundation, led by the First Lady of Zanzibar, Mariam H. Mwinyi, underlined the importance of collaboration between nations. The Maisha Bora Foundation, since its foundation in 2021, has been dedicated to the empowerment of women, youth and children in Zanzibar.

For Gueta Chapo, the visit provided a valuable platform to share the actions and challenges of his own office in Mozambique.

"We, as the Office of the First Lady of Mozambique, have a fundamental role in supporting the government in the social area, our target group is children, vulnerable, disadvantaged children, young people, girls, the elderly, the disabled, people with mountaineering," she said.

In her speech, the Mozambican First Lady illustrated the impact of her work through concrete examples, such as the distribution of more than five thousand food baskets and the construction of homes for orphaned children and disadvantaged families. She also highlighted the crucial support given to children with complex medical conditions.

Education and the defense of women's rights were central themes in the speech by the wife of the President of the Republic, who mentioned the granting of scholarships to young people and daughters of widows, as well as expressing her deep concern about the injustice faced by women in cases of widowhood.

"We have to work so that our mothers, our daughters, know that this woman has been wronged. As well as losing her husband, she also loses her property. Even to the point of having her children taken away," she lamented, echoing her own story.

The First Lady also addressed support for people with disabilities and expressed her firm condemnation of domestic violence and femicide, a real problem in Mozambique.

"We are also against domestic violence, we are against violence against women, we are against femicide. In Sofala province, in our country, many women have been killed and murdered, in Maputo too, in Manica and Tete provinces, simply for being women. And women cannot continue to be mistreated, to be killed, to be used as disposable toilet paper," she declared indignantly.

The First Lady's agenda also included a visit to the Mwanamke Initiative Foundation Authority, another non-governmental organization in Zanzibar dedicated to the empowerment of women, youth and children.

This interaction allowed for an exchange of knowledge and strategies between the two nations, aimed at strengthening actions in favor of the most vulnerable.

The visit of the First Lady of the Republic to Zanzibar, as part of the state visit of the President of the Republic, Daniel Chapo, to Tanzania, demonstrates Mozambique's commitment to strengthening ties with African countries and learning from successful models in the field of social development and the protection of human rights.