Maputo, June 23, 2025 (Lusa) - Portugal’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Ana Isabel Xavier, announced on Monday in Maputo that political dialogue with Mozambique will be strengthened in order to prepare for the sixth bilateral summit, to be held in 2026.
The Portuguese minister is in Maputo to take part in the celebrations of Mozambique’s 50th anniversary of independence, which will be marked on Wednesday, also attended by the Portuguese president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. Today she was received by Mozambique’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Maria Lucas.
“There are several areas in which we want to collaborate and, above all, we want to commit ourselves to a deep political dialogue that will intensify in the coming weeks so that, in 2026, we can hold our sixth summit, which we also hope will have tangible and operational results for the benefit of both countries,” said the Portuguese minister in statements to journalists after the meeting with the Mozambican minister.
During the previous, fifth Mozambique-Portugal summit, held in September 2022 in Maputo, 18 agreements and memoranda were signed between the two governments, involving areas such as institutional capacity building in the sectors of agriculture, education, justice, health, heritage and culture, the Portuguese School of Mozambique, the promotion of the Portuguese language and financing for companies and job creation in Cabo Delgado, a province in the north of the country.
On this visit to Mozambique, the secretary of state intends to learn more about Portuguese Cooperation projects, and she also assured that the future lies mainly in areas where Portugal already collaborates.
“We agree that, rather than looking for new areas of cooperation, we should strengthen those that are really important to us and that are of common concern to both countries. The first would inevitably be the areas of security and defence,” she said, referring to Portugal’s direct support for training over the last 30 years and, in multilateral terms, through the European Union.
“But beyond this security and defence dimension, which is indeed very important, there is also language, the economy and investment. These are areas that truly unite the two countries and in which both countries are committed to even stronger cooperation,” added Ana Isabel Xavier.
The Portuguese Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation also highlighted the importance of the Portuguese Government’s presence at the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of Mozambique’s independence, which was proclaimed on 25 June 1975 by the first Mozambican president, Samora Machel.
“This is also a very important date for Portugal, given that in 2024 Portugal also celebrated 50 years since the 25 April revolution, and so we feel that the history of the two countries has been intertwined, and it is precisely this shared history that we have commemorated here today with the Minister of Foreign Affairs,” she concluded.
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