The Diplomat
The new ambassador of Mozambique in Spain, Maria Manuela dos Santos, visited yesterday the headquarters of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) to express her appreciation for the cooperation work in the African country.
Dos Santos, who was appointed ambassador last February by the president of Mozambique, Filipe Nyussi, and delivered the style copies of her Letters of Credence last May 14, was received by the director of the AECID, Magdy Martínez Solimán.
As reported by the Agency through Twitter, “Spain carries out important and varied cooperation actions in the African country, and fully supports the country in the face of the difficult situation in the region of Cabo Delgado”, where the humanitarian and security situation has continued to worsen since 2017 due to the irruption of non-state armed groups loyal to Daesh and the consequent escalation of violence, which has led to the internal displacement of more than 700,000 people.
Last April, AECID and eleven autonomous communities decided to support a joint response in Cabo Delgado within the framework of the Contingency Fund contemplated by the decentralized cooperation agreement between the Agency and local entities. Apart from that, the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, requested last June 28 in Rome, during the ministerial meeting of the Global Coalition against Daesh, the creation of a specific working group on the rise of the terrorist group in Africa and the EU Foreign Affairs Council yesterday approved the creation of a European military training mission in Mozambique (EUTM Mozambique) with the aim of training and assisting the Mozambican armed forces to protect the civilian population and restore security and safety in the province of Cabo Delgado.
“Mozambique is grateful for the constant support of Spanish Cooperation over the last decades, with development cooperation, cultural and educational cooperation, humanitarian action or police cooperation”, continued AECID, which recalled that, by 2022, a new Spain-Mozambique Partnership Framework (MAP) is expected to be signed.
AECID approved last May a grant of 1,305,000 euros for a UN-Habitat project to promote sustainable mobility in the Metropolitan Area of Maputo, in Mozambique. In April 2019, the Agency sent its first mission of the Spanish Technical Team for Emergency Relief and Response (START, known as the “red vests”) to Mozambique to help victims of Cyclone Idai.
