Good afternoon. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is visiting Mozambique this week — his only southern African stop on a tour of the continent that precedes Japan’s hosting of a G7 summit in a fortnight’s time.
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There is a case to be made that Mozambique is Japan’s most important partner on the continent. Despite the demise of two flagship projects — the ProSavana agricultural initiative which never really got off the ground, and Mitsui’s participation in Vale’s coal mining project, which quickly went south — Japan still has big interests in Mozambique, particularly in the energy sector.
Mitsui is a member of the TotalEnergies-led consortium operating Mozambique LNG, and Japan is a likely buyer for some of that gas, too. The same company also owns a big stake in agricultural commodities trader ETG — and is apparently behind ETG’s parent company ETC’s bid to build the new mega hydropower dam at Mphanda Nkuwa. The other bidder is a consortium of French companies TotalEnergies and EDF, and Japan’s Sumitomo.
