Cabo Delgado Governor Valige Tauabo has called for lasting commercial relationships between megaprojects and Mozambican companies, arguing that such ties are essential to strengthen local supplier capacity, promote skills transfer, and facilitate access to broader markets.

The governor made the remarks at the Conference on Value Addition Based on Available Mineral and Energy Resources, held from 19 to 24 October in Nacala, Nampula province. He argued that national participation in large-scale investments must go beyond the occasional contracting of services.

Quoted by news agency Lusa, Tauabo said the benefits of natural resource extraction must translate into concrete opportunities for businesses and the general population, with particular attention to youth and women.

“Young people, women, and the population as a whole must not be spectators of large investments, but active participants,” he said.

The governor called for greater coordination between public and private institutions to avoid the dispersal of efforts and ensure that industrial investments respond to the priorities of the province and the country.

Technical and vocational training was identified as another key priority. Tauabo advocated for closer links between educational institutions and companies, so that workers’ skills can be matched to the requirements of megaprojects and more easily certified.

He also identified access to finance as one of the principal obstacles to the creation and growth of small and medium-sized enterprises seeking to integrate into supply chains.

For the governor, national participation must deliver tangible results: decent employment, improved housing conditions, skills development, business creation, and increased output and productivity.

The appeal comes as natural gas investments in the Rovuma Basin, off the coast of Cabo Delgado, continue to expand. The Coral Sul floating LNG facility, operated by Italy’s Eni, has been in production since 2022. The commissioning of Coral Norte, scheduled for 2028, is expected to raise the combined capacity of both units to approximately seven million tonnes of liquefied natural gas per year.

In Area 1, the Mozambique LNG project, led by TotalEnergies, announced the full resumption of activities on 29 January 2026, following a suspension that began in 2021 due to the security situation in Cabo Delgado.