No more land mines in Mozambique

My favourite kind of news is this one - where a country with a lot of potential does away with a stumbling block that no country should have to deal with, in this case land mines.

And since this is Moçambique, here's a Portuguese link to the same story.

Moçambique declarou esta quinta-feira que está livre de minas antipessoais, ao fim de mais de duas décadas de um programa de desminagem em todo o país, que era um dos cinco mais ameaçados do mundo por este tipo de engenhos

Mozambique declared itself this Friday free of land mines after more than two decades of a de-mining program throughout the country, which had been one of the five most threatened in the world from these devices.

Apparently there is a special kind of large rat that was trained to find them.

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Galp Energia CEO believes oil will improve geopolitical position of Portuguese

Publico has an interview with the CEO of Galp Energia, a Portuguese energy firm with about 7000 employees, who believes upcoming production of oil in Brazil and gas in Mozambique are a good sign for the geopolitical importance of the Portuguese language.

Taking a look at the firm's worldwide presence shows a large similarity to the Portuguese Empire. Where the company operates:

and the Portuguese Empire:

Much of the article is about the company itself and its partner Sinopec. Taking that out and condensing some of the more general parts the executive summary is:

The CEO of Galp Energia, Ferreira de Oliveira, believes that Brazilian oil and gas from Mozambique will change the perception the world has of the CPLP (Community of Portuguese Language Countries). Galp expects to produce 300,000 barrels of oil per day in 2020, 80% from Brazil. In the past year the company invested $600 million in oil exploration there. Most of the production is to take place in the Lula and Iara fields, and production will begin in 2017.

Q: Will Brazil continue to be the main priority for Galp Energia, or will it move to Angola, or more likely, to Mozambique?

A: "In the Lusophone countries, especially in Angola, Mozambique and Brazil, from 2006 to today, we have seen 26% of all new discoveries of oil and gas. If we count only deepwater discoveries, they make up 52%. The rate of growth here will be explosive. I have no doubt that this decade in which we are living will position the CPLP geopolitically in the world. Mozambique is now developing the largest gas project in the world, and Brazil the largest oil project in the world. Being in these two projects is an enormous privilege and a huge responsibility.

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Equatorial Guinea kept out of the CPLP for now

For the moment Equatorial Guinea has been kept out of the CPLP, not a surprise after Portugal voiced its objection a few days before:

Equatorial Guinea will continue to wait to be a full member of the CPLP (Community of Portuguese Language Countries, Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa). The conference of heads of state of the organization met last week in Maputo came to the conclusion that the country did not meet the conditions to realize its wish to join.

The rejection of the request by the former Spanish colony became clear when Portugal expressed its reservations, through foreign minister Paulo Portas. The objection of just one country is enough to keep the CPLP from coming to an agreement.

The accession of Equatorial Guinea had led to protests in Portugal and other Lusophone countries, because of the dictatorial nature of the government of Teodoro Obiang, president for three decades.

Keeping in contact for the past two years with CPLP representatives in Lisbon and Malabo, Obiang's regime sough to show its work to incorporate the Portuguese language in the curriculum. Two years ago just before the meeting of heads of state in Luanda, Obiang issued a decree recognizing Portuguese as the third official language, along with Spanish and French.

The main barriers to entry for Equatorial Guinea are the existence of the death penalty and the absence of civil rights.

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Equatorial Guinea's fate in the CPLP to be decided on the 20th of July

From here in Portuguese:

The decision on the entrance of Equatorial Guinea in the Lusophone community will be taken at the summit in Maputo (Mozambique), 20 July.

One of the justifications for the petition by the movement called "Por Uma Comunidade de Valores" (For a Community of Values) against the entry of Equatorial Guinea into the CPLP (Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguese, Community of Portuguese Language Countries) is that the president of Equatorial Guinea is imposing the language on his country.

The executive director of the Instituto Internacional de Língua Portugesa (IILP), Gilvan de Oliveira, said that he respects the position of the civic movement, but noted that Equatorial Guinea is fulfilling, to the letter, a set of requirements imposed by the CPLP.

Also from another article:

The group denounces the crimes of the regime of Obiang, including summary executions, endemic corruption and constant oppression of civil society. "Equatorial Guinea currently has the largest average per capita income in all sub-Saharan Africa (with numbers similar to that of Italy). However, this apparently positive indicatory, mainly due to the petroleum resources of the country, is not enough to hide the fact that over 70% of the population of the country (about 650,000 inhabitants) lives under the standards of extreme poverty as defined by the UN (less than two dollars per day).

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Opposition in Portugal opposed to Equatorial Guinea in the CPLP

Some info from here in Portuguese (from Deutsche Welle):

The government in Lisbon is being pressed in Parliament to boycott the accession of Equatorial Guinea to the CPLP (Community of Portuguese Language Countries) and to now yield to economic interests.

The controversial admission of Equatorial Guinea as a member of the CPLP has led the Left Bloc (Bloco de Esquerda, BE) to present in Parliament on Tuesday a resolution recommending that the government reject the accession of the country due to being "repressive and corrupt."

"It would be a double-wrong decision, for lack of both linguistic and democratic requirements" says the resolution, as well as that an eventual accession would be "a huge discredit" to the CPLP.

An eventual accession of Equatorial Guinea to the CPLP requires the unanimous approval of the heads of state and government of the organization.

The decision of the Portuguese government is dependent on the report that the organization will present at the summit in Maputo (capital of Mozambique), scheduled for July...Mozambique will be assuming the rotating presidency of the organization at the same time.

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Implementing Portuguese orthographic accord to cost Mozambique around $100 million

An article here in Portuguese says that the cost to implement the Portuguese orthographic accord in Mozambique will end up costing around $100 million - the article says at one point that it will be "at least $100 million" and then estimates the cost at $72.3 million, so we'll just go with $100 as a rough estimate. The cost would come from new textbooks, training teachers, journalists, public employees, etc.

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TIME's right, Verdade is pretty good

TIME has an article today on a Portuguese newspaper in Mozambique called Verdade and the positive effects it has had on the country so far (including electoral turnout), and taking a look at their website it is quite a nice paper. On the right in a small box is a link to download their most recent issues, and this page will enable you to download any and all of them (total of 119 so far).

In their next to most recent issue for example they have fully translated four of the leaked embassy cables that pertain to Mozambique, and here's the first page of it (you'll have to click to see it at full size):

Given that one of my pet peeves is writing articles on issues or speeches with no or hardly any sourcing to back it up (at least a paragraph or two from the issue or speech in question), magazines and newspapers that go to this much detail will almost always win my approval. Or at least a link to the primary source so that readers can verify what is being written with a single click.

As for the status of Portuguese itself in Mozambique, see here. Unsurprisingly, it's used much more in urban areas than rural.

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French podcast on the status of the Portuguese language in Africa

Here's an interesting podcast in French of about 26 minutes in length on the status of the Portuguese language in Africa, specifically in Guinea-Bissau, Cabo Verde, Angola and Mozambique. Actually, I think I can embed it here...

There we go. It's all spoken so I was only able to jot down a few notes while listening. They are:

Guinea-Bissau is the place where Portuguese is weakest, as very few speak it fluently, even in government. They have a Portuguese creole there, used a lot but without a written standard so it's spoken only. Apparently the negative is often formed with ka.

Cabo Verde has a Portuguese creole too, which apparently is closer to standard Portuguese than that in Guinea-Bissau.

Portuguese in Angola is quite strong, and there are four regional languages that receive support/approval from the government too. Some 75% of the population speaks Portuguese.

Mozambique is where Portuguese is the strongest, and schools etc. are all in Portuguese. I have a post here from last month with a lot more information on how much Portuguese is used there - apparently it's used for 90% of urban communication there.

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Portuguese used as language of urban communication throughout 90% of Mozambique

An article here on the status of Portuguese in Mozambique contains a lot of numbers that can be seen in this post from last year, but contains some new ones as well. Here are all the numbers together, with the ones in bold the "new" information (new being defined as that which didn't appear in the article last year; the information itself is probably not brand new).

• 90% of the urban population in Mozambique uses Portuguese as a language of communication
• Portuguese is spoken in the home by 9% of the population, and as a mother tongue by 6.5%
• Total population of Mozambique: 21.8 million
• In Maputo where 960 000 people live, 412 000 have Portuguese as their mother tongue.
• Those aged 5 to 9 have the largest amount of Portuguese speakers in the capital (85 603), while those that speak it least are in the 35 to 39 year range (16 000 people).
• In 1975, Portuguese was adopted as the official language of Mozambique. At the time only 10% of the population had access to school. Today literacy has risen to 52%.
• Right now six million Mozambicans attend school, where they often have their first contact with the Portuguese language. However, 200 000 children are not able to attend school due to a lack of vacancies, schools or teachers.

So in short, Portuguese is doing very well in Mozambique, and could be doing ever better with improved access to schooling.


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New undersea cable to South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Mozambique brings high-speed internet to Eastern Africa

Finally, it's done! This has been a long time coming; I remember writing about the cables under construction back in February. For most websites dialup just doesn't cut it anymore, and high-speed internet is just about the difference between having access and no access at all. Simply playing a video on YouTube for example requires a fairly fast connection that Eastern Africa just didn't have until now.



According to the article, companies such as Tanesco (electricity), TTCL (communications), Tanzania Railways and Universities of Dar es Salaam and Dodoma are already benefiting from the new connection.

A part of the article also mentions that though prices have gone down for businesses from $3000 a month to $600 a month, ISPs are not lowering prices for average consumers but are instead offering increased bandwidth. Whether they can keep this up for long is hard to say, because the idea of lowering prices to average consumers as well may just be too tempting to one and this would cause the others to follow suit. We'll see what happens in the next few weeks/months.

The comments below the article are particularly interesting so be sure to take a look at them. Many have already begun to see an improvement in service, but certainly not all.

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Portuguese being spoken more and more in urban areas in Mozambique

Panorama de Maputo, a capital e a maior cidade de Moçambique

Good news for Portuguese. Portuguese and Brazilians like to complain (and they're probably right) that their countries don't do enough to promote the language as an international tongue, but nevertheless it seems to be growing in Mozambique. Info from the article:

In Mozambique, the number of Portuguese speakers is increasing in urban areas, especially among the young population of the capital Maputo where Portuguese is gaining ground on various local languages. The National Institute of Statistics in Mozambique indicates that Portuguese is spoken by 40% of the Mozambican population, estimated at 20.3 million (that's the population of Mozambique, not the number of Portuguese speakers), used at home by 9% and is the mother tongue of 6.5%. Ninety percent of those that have Portuguese as a mother tongue live in urban areas. 80% of the population of Mozambique lives in rural areas where the need to speak Portuguese is not so strong.

The city of Maputo has a population of approximately 960,000, of which 412,000 have Portuguese as an official language. The age group with the largest number of Portuguese speakers is that of ages five to nine (!), with 85,603 speakers. By comparison, there are only 16,000 speakers aged 35-39.

A young and growing population = good news for the future of Portuguese in the country.

On a related note, this article says that exports from Portugal to Mozambique increased by 33% in 2008.

Also don't forget that the influence is also extending to nearby countries like Zambia, which has decided to introduce Portuguese in the school curriculum (but that's mostly because of oil-rich Angola in the west).

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Introducing astronomy to developing countries (like Mozambique)

There's an interesting PDF here on introducing astronomy to Mozambican society, just a few pages long but worth reading. 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy and a big part of this event is increasing interest in astronomy in developing nations too (and giving them the tools to do so as well). Developing Astronomy Globally has classified developing countries based on the potential for the creation of a strong community of astronomers within them.

The development of astronomy in developing countries is a very important task considering that astronomy is much cheaper for a country to develop than its own launch capability or space program, but at the same time there is a definite need for more people in the field given the huge amount of data that needs to be sifted through by qualified people. Galaxy Zoo is one good example, as is the discovery of an extrasolar planet using old Hubble data.

As for Mozambique, the plans for development of astronomy in the country right now are pretty modest, such as the establishment of an amateur astronomical society...but later on they hope to establish a full-fledged observatory.

The official language of Mozambique is Portuguese, and thus there's more info in Portuguese than English on the subject. See here and here for examples.

Now that we're on the verge of discovering Earth-like planets, astronomy has become quite the prestigious subject. Discovering a planet even close to the size of Earth for example brings a ton of attention. Now add to that the fact that the most successful planet-hunting team so far has been using a telescope of only 3.6 metres in diameter, and all of a sudden we have a nice niche where developing countries can place themselves too. Extrasolar planets have been detected by telescopes as small as 10 cm in diameter.

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Mpumalanga (South Africa) to award bursaries to business people to learn Portuguese

Mpumalanga in South Africa. Mozambique is just across the border and has 21 million people.

Another Portuguese in Africa-related article here tells us about how the South African province of Mpumalanga is offering bursaries to 30 business people to study Portuguese, as this is the language spoken in Mozambique across the border from the province. The capital of the country (Maputo) is also located in the far south, so very close to Mpumalanga.

The article doesn't say just how much is being offered but the deadline is 4 May, so if you're a resident of Mpumalanga you may be interested in that.

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