REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE, AT THE RECEPTION OF H.E. LAZARO BIMBE, GOVERNOR OF NIASSA
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE, AT THE RECEPTION OF H.E. LAZARO BIMBE, GOVERNOR OF NIASSA, HOTEL GIROSSOL, LICHINGA, NIASSA
Sua Excelência, Senhor Governador da Província de Niassa,
Distintos membros do Governo de Moçambique,
Minhas senhoras e meus senhores,
É una grande prazer e honra para mi e minha delegação estar aqui com todos voces esta noite na Provincia de Niassa e, no especial, na cidade de Lichinga.
Excellency, ladies and gentlemen, I am very happy to have this opportunity to visit Lichinga on my State visit to your wonderful country. I know that there is a strong and productive partnership between the people of Niassa and the people of Ireland and I am looking forward to seeing at first hand, some examples of our partnership in action tomorrow.
The partnership between us began ten years ago and has achieved much in the intervening years. What makes those achievements special are the considerable challenges that faced Niassa. It is the most remote province in the country. It has some of the least populated districts and is one of the least developed provinces in this country.
There are some parallels with Ireland’s story. Before our recent economic success, Ireland was often described as a small, isolated island off mainland Europe, with little resources, little industry, high unemployment and whose main export was her people. I know that your experience in Niassa mirrored that sense of isolation, lack of resources and lack of hope when our partnership began.
We also have a shared approach to charting an escape from poverty. In our case, we benefited from a generous aid programme. With support from the European Union to help us build our infrastructure and health and education services, we have broken free of the shackles of poverty and are now one of the most successful economies in the world.
That success creates a moral obligation on us to assist those who are now where we once were. And it is an obligation, not an option. Because all our interests are served by creating a more equal world where the rights of small and weaker nations are underpinned by a culture of fairness and redress and with the right to that minimum expectation that one’s children will live better than oneself. That is the basis for our engagement in Sub-Saharan Africa, in Mozambique and in Niassa.
In partnership with Niassa, we are trying to help the province address the type of challenges we too faced. With His Excellency, the Governor, and his team driving this agenda, we aim to work together to improve basic health and education services while also seeking to create viable employment for the citizens who are living with the despair that comes from being unemployed or under-employed.
Despite its isolation, this province has incredible potential - potential in agriculture, in tourism, in natural resources and in the brain power of its people that education and training can harness. It is good to see there is significant progress to report. The connection of the province to the national power grid, the completion of the Litunde Ruaca road, and the upgrading of the airport to international status are just some of the very positive steps in recent years. Other encouraging signs are the fact that significant foreign investment is beginning to flow into the province and both forestry and tourism are just two of many areas that are beginning to develop their potential.
My itinerary tomorrow will take me deep into the amazing journey Mozambique and Niassa have made from a war-torn economy to a society where people can live in peace, with hope in the future and invest in that future. We are accustomed in Ireland to hearing depressing stories about the impact in Africa of HIV/AIDS and the story is undoubtedly catastrophic in scale and impact. But there is another story of fighting back, of pushing back the tide of Aids and tomorrow we will see how it has been possible here to restore hope to those afflicted.
From the days when Ireland was counted among the poorest of the poor we have a long and proud tradition of missionary outreach to Africa and other developing parts of the world. These men and women, highly educated and professional, caring and unselfish, have been the finest of ambassadors for Ireland. They invested their lives in adopted homelands, endured hardships of all sorts and did so without complaint or thought of recognition or thanks. Their vocation was and is the improvement of the lives of the poor and so we find them in health care, in education, in community capacity building. Often they were backed by financial help from home but often too they had to rely on their own ingenuity and persuasiveness to move things forward. They are the most cogent proof of the difference that one human being can make in our world when they commit their lives to doing good for others. I am looking forward to seeing another great example of that tomorrow when I visit the Solidarity Farm run by Sr. Ferreira.
So many out-dated images of Mozambique have been replaced and are being replaced each day by people of goodwill as they tackle poverty, using partnership with countries like Ireland to real and lasting effect so that a people who have known such bad times can look forward to a an appealing and enticing future.
Here in this most distant of Mozambique’s provinces I am proud that the managers of our aid programme were willing to take on the logistical and poverty challenges of a province as far from the centre as Niassa, and delighted to be able to join with Your Excellency in celebrating our ten years of solid and achieving partnership. There is a saying in Ireland that a good start is half the work. Let me assure you that Ireland is wholeheartedly committed to staying the course and helping this Province achieve its full potential.
Muito obrigada