Good afternoon. The visit of Mozambican foreign minister Maria Lucas to Moscow this week is the latest evidence of a deepening relationship with Russia, the groundwork for which was set by former president Filipe Nyusi. So far those overtures have produced little, but the conditions may now be right for a more meaningful partnership — for better or for worse.
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One of the first crises that greeted President Daniel Chapo following his inauguration in January was the dismantling of the American overseas aid agency, USAID. Estimates vary on the exact impact, but between USAID and the Millennium Challenge Compact, which has also been shuttered, Mozambique was in line to receive around a billion dollars over the next three years from the US, which was by far the country’s biggest donor.
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Tom Gould
Now Russia says it is building its own version of USAID. Earlier this month, Yevgeny Primakov, head of the Russian cooperation agency Rossotrudnichestvo, said in an interview that Russia’s foreign ministry is currently drafting a new law “in order to create a format similar to USAID”, to allow his agency “to do at least some useful thing abroad that will somehow affect its influence”. The Russian agency will not replace USAID, he admitted, but “would compete, for example, with Finland, which has its own development agency.”
