Written By Tommaso Campomagnani
Ever since the discovery of natural gas fields (the 9th largest in the world) on its Northern shores, Mozambique has found itself at a crossroads. It can either become “Africa’s Qatar” or become another case study on how natural resources condemn a country to violence and conflict. France’s help could be decisive in pushing it in the right direction.
Cabo Delgado’s Difficult Situation
In 2010, when 5,000 billion cubic meters of natural gas were discovered in the Northern coasts of Mozambique, it seemed as if fate had finally smiled on the poverty-stricken country, which only managed to put behind the wounds of its previous civil war last year. The development of three LNG (liquefied natural gas) projects, standing at a combined worth of over $60 billion, in the province of Cabo Delgado, could create over 50,000 jobs and make the southern African country a “gas-exporting Eldorado” according to French magazine Le Point. At the moment Mozambique’s ambition to become “Africa’s Qatar” is beginning to look like a pipedream. Here we are in 2020 and the country’s situation is most similar to states in the Sahel as opposed to the prosperous Gulf emirates.
Cabo Delgado has fallen prey to a growing jihadi insurgency. Since 2017, over 100,000 people have been displaced as a result of the killings, kidnappings and beheadings that have engulfed the impoverished northern region. Covid-19 has seen foreign investment frozen or postponed, but the insurgency has grown, with the first quarter of 2020 being the deadliest so far in terms of attacks on civilians.
The quagmire represents a challenge not only for the Mozambican government and the companies that have invested in Cabo Delgado, but for the Western countries who have major stakes in the multi-billion-dollar project. France in particular has developed a strategic interest in Mozambique, one where the lines between private corporate investment and state foreign policy is murky to say the least. Total, the French oil major, purchased the Mozambique LNG Assets of Anadarko, the U.S. energy company that first discovered Mozambique’s gas reserves, in 2019. It is now the biggest player and stakeholder in the gas project alongside Italian ENI and American ExxonMobil.
These developments coincide with a military rapprochement between France and Mozambique. The two share a maritime border in the Mozambique Channel of the Indian Ocean, where several French islands such as Mayotte and some of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands are located. Their sovereignty is contested by former French colonies Madagascar and Comoros, making the support of Mozambique essential to Paris if the territorial dispute were to escalate. Bilateral relations between the two have been growing since 2015. The two countries’ navies now cooperate on common security projects, among them tackling illegal fishing and piracy across the canal, which is a strategic shipping passage that supports over 30% of gas-tanker traffic.
Paris and Maputo: A Budding Relationship
Economic ties between Paris and Maputo were also strengthened by Mozambique’s purchase of 24 fishing boats and 6 vessels from Constructions Mécaniques de Normandie (CMN), a private shipyard company, based in northern France. Though the purchase backfired, having been part of a wider government scandal that would rock the country. The loans that were supposed to finance the fishing project, were either diverted to the defence budget or omitted altogether. International donors and the IMF packed their bags, plunging the Mozambican economy into disarray as the country defaulted on its sovereign bonds. Despite this, French investment into the country paid no attention to the capital flight of others, drawn by the promise of eye-watering returns from the upcoming gas bonanza.
However, the economic impact of Covid-19 on the oil and gas industry, coupled with the growing violence in Cabo Delgado may force a change of reasoning. Additionally, France’s role in the gas project is coming under increasing scrutiny at home: the NGO Amis de la Terre just published a damning report on its environmental impact, accusing Paris of “initiating a climate ticking [time] bomb” in the African nation.
What Can France Do?
The concerns raised by Amis de la Terre are indeed valid, but divestment and withdrawal are not the right solutions. First, if the French government were to pressure Total to withdraw from the project, the void is likely to be filled by other powers that have set their sight on the gas-rich eastern African nation. Russia, which has been pushing to extend its geopolitical influence in the continent in the past few years, has sought to gain a foothold in Mozambique. The Kremlin-affiliated Private Military Contractor, the “Wagner” Group, which has also been fighting in Libya alongside General Haftar, has partnered with Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi to fight the insurgency in Cabo Delgado.
Second, the project’s medium-term environmental impact is not so nefarious from a global standpoint: Mozambique’s location in the Indian Ocean puts it in a perfect position to become a major gas supplier to India and China, who have been seeking to shift their energy policy from coal to gas (natural gas emits around 50% less CO2 than coal). While the net balance in terms of world carbon emissions is of course hard to calculate at this stage, the picture is less dire than it seems, not to mention the benefits this could bring to the country’s economy and population. Mozambique has one of the lowest GDP per capita in the world and it is still recovering from the devastation caused by two tropical cyclones in 2019.
So far, France’s role has been limited to joint naval exercises with Mozambique’s navy in the region, designed to monitor and ensure the security of the LNG infrastructure project. But Paris needs to change their approach. Rather than helping the Mozambican army suppress the revolts militarily like it has done in the Sahel, Paris should leverage on its strategic partnership with Maputo to make it change its military’s heavy-handed tactics and stymie its predatory impulses. These are uniquely ill-suited and do nothing but exacerbate the insurgency, which has no proven links to other terrorist groups such as IS or Al Shabaab so far.
Indeed, Cabo Delgado, whose Muslim population largely adhere to Sufi Islam, (rather than the radicalism espoused by the insurgents) is also one of the poorest and most neglected regions of Mozambique. Its natural wealth has not helped. The locals, mostly fishermen and farmers, have not only failed to reap the economic benefits of the gas projects, but thousands have been forced to resettle without receiving adequate compensation to make way for the LNG plants, which receive the bulk of military protection as per an agreement signed with the Mozambican Defence Ministry, a glaring injustice considering that the same armed forces fail to protect the vulnerable population. All this plays into the hands of the extremists.
What Paris can do is prompt Maputo to acknowledge and act on the symbiotic relationship between the increasing lawlessness and the pre-existing socioeconomic woes that plague the region. For a start, it must continue to provide logistic and technical assistance to its armed forces while broadening bilateral economic support to communities in Cabo Delgado via channels such as the Agence Française de Développement. France could also plead Mozambique’s case in the international arena by calling for forgiveness of its debt, thereby ending its status as a financial pariah. This may have been far-fetched a year ago at the height of the scandal. But now that the idea of granting debt relief to developing countries has gained traction as a result of Covid-19, success is definitely not out of sight, provided that much needed transparency conditions are fulfilled.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the French government must pressure Total to fulfil its corporate social responsibility goals. The preservation of Cabo Delgado’s unique biodiversity and making sure that local stakeholders have their say in the resettlement process (among others), are more than moral imperatives, rather they are necessary strategic steps. Today, Mozambique still has the luxury of being at a crossroads: achieve “Africa’s Qatar” dream or become another case study on how natural resources condemned a country to violence and conflict. France’s help could be decisive in pushing it in the right direction.
References
The Economist, (2020) “Jihad on Africa’s Eastern Shore: Mozambique’s mysterious conflict is intensifying”
Yussuf, A., Pirio, G., Pittelli, R. (2019) “The Many Drivers Enabling Islamic Extremism in Northern Mozambique”, Africa Centre for Strategic Studies
Strohecker, K. (2019) “Factbox: Mozambique Debt Crisis - What Does the Country Owe, and To Whom?”, Reuters
Genoud, E. (2017) “Why Islamist Attacs Demands a Careful Response from Mozambique”, The Conversation
Minano, L., Anderzewjski., C. “Soutien aux energies fossiles: l’hypocrisie de la France au Mozambique”, Investigate Europe
Rawoot, I. (2020) “Gas-rich Mozambique May Be Headed Towards Disaster”, Al Jazeera English
The Economist, (2020) “Gas, guns and guerrillas: Jihadists threaten Mozambique’s new gas fields”
Relations Bilaterales France-Mozambique, France Diplomatie, Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires Etrangères
Barbier, A. (2016) “L’économie du Mozambique dans le rouge au fond du scandale Ematum”, Le Monde Afrique
Peters, S. (2020) “Russia’s Latest Intervention in Mozambique Exemplifies Kremlin’s Ruthless Aprroach to Geopolitics”, The Organization for World Peace
Bensimon. C, Wakim, N. (2020) “Mozambique: comment le soutien de la France à l’industrie gazière accentue la militarisation du pays”, Le Monde Afrique
“De L’Eldorado Gazier au Chaos: Quand la France pousse le Mozambique dans le piège du gaz”, Amis de la Terre
Rantrua, S. (2020) “Mozambique: ce futur Eldorado gazier”, Le Point
Tommaso Campomagnani, Columnist, is a first year undergraduate student at the Menton Campus of Sciences Po Paris, specializing in Politics and Government with a regional focus on the Middle East. A London-born Italian citizen, he has been living in the Canary Islands, Spain for the past six years, where he attended a British school. At Sciences Po, Tommaso is a member of the Model Mediterranean United Nations and the Junior Consulting. He is passionate about the intersection of foreign policy and domestic affairs, particularly in the context of the Middle East and Europe. When not debating about current events in either English, French, Spanish or Italian, Tommaso can be found enjoying the paradisiac climate of the French Riviera or the Canary islands depending on the time of the year.
He can be contacted at [email protected]
