Chapo inaugurates the 2026 school year

Maputo, 28 Feb (AIM) – Mozambican President Daniel Chapo on Friday chaired the opening of the 2026 school year in the central city of Beira.

The school year should have begun on 2 February, but the government opted for a delay of almost a month because of the catastrophic flooding that struck much of southern and central Mozambique in January.

Chapo declared that this was a responsible decision “taken to protect the lives of the Mozambican people, which is our number one objective”.

The floods and cyclones that hit Mozambique regularly “give us a clear lesson”, said Chapo, “which is to prepare the new generations to understand, protect, plan, manage and monitor in a world marked by climatic challenges as a result of climate change”.

Earlier in the day, Chapo handed over one of the largest schools in Beira, the Manga Secondary School, totally rebuilt and rehabilitated after the devastating impact of Cyclone Idai in 2019.

This was one of the worst cyclones on record. “It did not only destroy infrastructures”, said Chapo, “but it tried to shake our collective confidence as a people”.

The delivery to the education authorities of the rebuilt Manga Secondary School is a victory “for the resilience of a people over challenges and adversities”.

“Where there were once silence and ruins, the voices of children are now heard again”, said Chapo. “Where there had been damaged walls, structures are now built that protect the dreams of the future”.

He also inaugurated a new basic school in the Esturro neighbourhood. This new school, with 46 classrooms, built from scratch, results from funding granted by one of the government’s international partners, the Buddhist Tzu Chi Charity Foundation.

“This school demonstrates that the government is not marching alone”, said the President. “There is nobody, as a government, as a state, as a family, or as an individual, who grows and advances on his own. We all need our neighbours so that we can grow together”.

Support from partners such as the Tzu Chi Foundation and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) “is continuing to transform lives and communities in Mozambique”, he added.

Chapo appealed to the local community to look after the new schools. “These public facilities are assets of the people”, he said. “Caring for these schools is caring for the future of our children. Let each classroom be preserved! Let each wall be respected! Let these spaces be true sanctuaries of knowledge”.

“We have declared education as the central pillar of national transformation”, said the President, “and as the most powerful instrument of economic freedom for Mozambican citizens. Investing in education is, above all, investing in people”.

“Each pupil represents a promise”, he declared. “Each school is a laboratory of the future. Each teacher is a silent builder of the Mozambican nation. Each classroom built is a doorway opened for gaining our economic independence”.

Chapo pledged that no child will go without the textbooks that the government has pledged to distribute free of charge “because access to knowledge cannot be a privilege, but an effective right for everyone”.

He acknowledged that many books had been destroyed in the recent flooding, and pledged to replace them as soon as possible.

Chapo revived a slogan of the liberation movement from the independence war: “Let us make the school a Base for the People to Take Power”.

”While yesterday the school was the base to conquer political power”, he said, “today it must be the base for the conquest of economic power as a people – the power to produce, to innovate, to compete and to prosper”.
(AIM)
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