PROAZUL Working To Enable Multi-sector Collaboration

PROAZUL Working To Enable Multi-sector Collaboration

Maputo, 19 Dec (AIM) – The Fund for the Development of the Blue Economy (ProAzul), the Mozambican government’s financial branch for boosting the blue economy agenda, is improving its internal instruments to improve multi-sectoral collaboration in order to guarantee mobilisation of resources for the sector.

To this end, ProAzul is finalizing the regulations for the Blue Economy Council, a body to advise and facilitate the participation of its main partners, ensuring the alignment of financial strategies with the initiatives for sustainable exploitation of inland waters, the sea and the Mozambican coastline.

The Chairperson of the Board of Directors of ProAzul, Simeão Lopes, confirmed this to AIM, in Maputo, during the first meeting of the body in which a memorandum of understanding was signed between ProAzul and GIZ Mozambique, a German organization that will finance initiatives to boost the blue economy agenda.

“The ProAzul Blue Economy Council is intended to be a strategic mechanism that enables the multisector collaboration that will lead the issues inherent to the blue economy in the country”, he said.

According to Lopes, the first meeting of the forum will bring together experiences from multiple areas of knowledge that, in his view, if well coordinated, will boost the achievement of the goals outlined.

For his part, the Director of Giz Mozambique, Ekkehardt Lang, recalled that the country has the fourth longest coastline in Africa, with rich marine life, harbouring some of the most important marine biodiversity in the world and with significant energy resources that sustain the livelihoods of thousands of coastal communities.

The implementation of the blue economy, says Lang, will need to be done in a multisector manner, with support from various stakeholders, where each contributes in a way that ensures a sustainable blue economy and is based on collaboration between government, private sector, the academic world, and civil society.

“The Government is currently shaping its vision for the Blue Economy with a range of stakeholders on the next Blue Economy Strategy. We will continue to support initiatives for the blue economy,” he declared.
(AIM)
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