Maputo, Aug. 14, 2025 (Lusa) - The chair of the board of directors of Standard Bank in Mozambique on Thursday defended the investment in new technologies to ensure good corporate governance, which is still "incipient" in the country.
"We are currently being confronted with artificial intelligence, we all feel that there is a need to define guidelines, but at the same time, we all feel that we have to use them. So it's important that, as a member of a body, of an institution, conditions are created for these technologies to be used for the benefit of the organisation and other parties," said Esselina Macome.
She was speaking at the first national congress on Corporate Governance at the Joaquim Chissano International Conference Centre in Maputo.
The chairwoman of the board of directors of Standard Bank, one of the largest in Mozambique, said that the world was living in an advanced digital age, and asked the boards of national companies not to ignore technology in their bid to ensure good corporate governance practices.
"This necessarily involves the fact that these board members must promote [technologies], but they also have to educate themselves. A board of directors has to continually equip itself with knowledge to better respond to the challenges of each moment," said Esselina Macome.
"The board of directors has to understand and have an ABC on these issues and realise that technology can even help to have information to make better decisions, and it has to make it easier for these practices to be used within the institution it is running. Today, it's not possible for an organisation to operate without technology and, if it wants to be efficient, technology must be there," she added.
In the same reflection, Macome argued that it is time to move forward with policies that advocate for Boards of Directors with an independent majority, noting that this is the evolving international standard.
"What's happening in our country is that we still don't have a specific model of how we want the Boards of Directors in different institutions, even in the same industry (...) If we look at the structure of a Board of Directors of a bank that has a group and a bank that is of English-speaking origin, it's different from Lusophone countries, so there needs to be standardisation," she said.
This is the first national congress on Corporate Governance to be held in the country, with the support of the Polytechnic University and Standard Bank, bringing together around 300 guests in Maputo, including managers, national and international experts, academics and politicians.
Speaking to journalists, the president of the Mozambican Institute of Corporate Governance (IGCmz), Daniel Tembe, once again acknowledged that this issue is still "incipient" for national companies, recognising more advanced sectors such as banking, insurance and multinationals.
"But we have a large majority of companies that don't comply because they don't know, they don't know how to deal with this type of matter, so they stick to the commercial code, but not everything can appear in the commercial code. Issues of ethics and integrity cannot be legislated," he said.
The institute is supporting companies with concepts of good governance practices by holding lectures and short courses for managers, including support for companies in formulating codes of conduct.
"If we can get the formal sector to have more companies practising best governance practices, that would be a big step and, little by little, companies can move from the informal to the formal," he added.
PME/ADB // ADB.
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