MOZAMBIQUE: Growing poverty with mineral wealth

Photo: Jaspreet Kindra/IRIN Can oil defeat poverty? MAPUTO, 7 January 2008 (IRIN) – For years, the coal-mining town of Moatize, in the northern Mozambican province of Tete, has been a ghost of its former self, but this is about to change. Its railroad is closed and the purpose-built prefabricated neighbourhood, called Berlin after long-disappeared German miners, now houses local residents. Like much of Mozambique’s extractive industry, the decades-long civil war resulted in large-scale damage to infrastructure, and the region’s mineral wealth was all but ignored. But the peace dividend appears to be paying off since hostilities ended in 1992. Vale do Rio Doce, a Brazilian mining company, is expected to resuscitate coal mining at Moatize by 2010 and its investment has already begun to bring rapid changes to the town.