Good afternoon. Business owners in Cabo Delgado province’s Palma district who are upset with French energy firm TotalEnergies will find little comfort in a statement from the firm’s head in Mozambique (see below). For months now, there have been complaints that TotalEnergies was cutting off the site of its $20bn-plus gas project on the Afungi peninsula from the rest of the district, forcing workers on the project to stay within the fenced construction site and restricting access to the site by land. This mostly or completely wipes out any chance local businesses had to informally sell goods and services to the project’s contractors or to people working for it.
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Initially it seemed that TotalEnergies was only forcing workers to remain on the project site and banning the long-distance transport of supplies for the project by land — with good reason, since the roads connecting Afungi with districts to the south, like the R775 to the town of Mocímboa da Praia and the N380 linking Mocímboa to the rest of Cabo Delgado, are vulnerable to insurgent attacks, and insurgents have repeatedly stopped traffic on the latter recently. But in recent weeks it has started to look like TotalEnergies will not allow mixing of local traders and workers who are based at the project site either.
