Good afternoon and welcome to yesterday’s newsletter. President Daniel Chapo is in Brazil this week for the United Nations’ COP 30 climate change conference. The president has a wide range of interests, judging by his foreign travel these days. Last month he was in Switzerland for a meeting of the World Meteorological Conference. Before then he attended a meeting of the United Nations International Conference on Financing for Development in Seville. He also tried to visit the United Kingdom earlier this year, but failed due to organisational problems. For next year, the government has announced a long list of countries Chapo plans to visit: Russia, China, Canada, Vietnam, Angola and Botswana.
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Particularly eye-catching was Chapo’s visit to the United States last week. The official pretext for the visit was to attend a conference on miombo, the savannah and scrubland territory in southern Africa which occupies much of Mozambique. Did the president need to attend? Not really. But as well as creating an excuse to visit the headquarters of oil and gas firm ExxonMobil in Houston and encourage them to move ahead with their gas project in Mozambique, it also gave Chapo the chance to be photographed with JD Vance, the US vice-president. At COP 30, Chapo has been shaking hands with other world leaders for the cameras.
While some of these visits may look pointless, they are necessary if Chapo is to improve his public image by being seen with foreign dignitaries. The fact is that those dignitaries are mostly unwilling to visit Mozambique: witness the near-complete absence of heads of state and government at Chapo’s presidential inauguration in January, and the lack of Western leaders at the 50th anniversary celebrations of Mozambique’s independence.
