Uplifting of Ruvuma river zone economy is massively important

This is going by recent remarks by a Tanzanian Foreign Affairs and East African Cooperation deputy minister.

He was making observations on what is being done to take up accords on areas of cooperation agreed between President Samia Suluhu Hassan and her host, President Felipe Jacinto Nyusi, during the former’s three-day state visit to Mozambique. The resumption of consultations at the level of the permanent commission stands as a pace setter, a test.

The deputy minister said at a virtual press briefing that defence and security cooperation was the first line of a slew of issues, along with communications, border verification, farming and mining.

Natural resources and student exchanges were also matters of reciprocity between the two sides, in which case the commission would be holding regular meetings on border security. They also intend to exchange experience in the oil and gas sector.

It is not very clear as to how much hard business the joint commission is likely to transact, but there are sure to be several aside from projects arising from pacts on cooperation that could also be handled by relevant ministerial departments.

Trying to figure out how to make the Tanzania-Mozambique joint commission a much busier forum is concomitantly trying to map out accelerated economic activities in the southern regions bordering Mozambique.

So far, what is being discussed is boosting security cooperation to halt movements of terror recruitment groups notorious for filtering into Cabo Delgado province from the southern regions.

The datum aired during President Samia’s visit that trade between Tanzania and her southern next-door neighbor had plummeted to a half in the past year relative to the previous financial year spoke volumes about the impact of insecurity on cross-border activities.

The fact that the commission did not meet for a whole decade and a half also has its own lessons, as the resulting vacuum may have helped terror organisations find something of benefit to them to do – with Mozambique paying a high price.

Thus, one would want to see the commission figuring figure out how exactly to make the vast common region a busier place. But here is a country with more of the history and experience one would need to weather the storm than perhaps any other.

One maxim dear to strategic studies pundits is that ‘the best form of defence is attack’ – in this particular case suggesting that perhaps the best way to defend the strife-prone zone is by ‘economically attacking’ it.

This means making it a buffer zone for the security of its outlying areas, north for the southern regions of Tanzania and south for the Cabo Delgado province, even if an economic uplift in the zone wasn’t the first order of things.

This is a segment where a special economic zone could be set up complete with special residential rights involving the purchasing of property, encouraging development partners and SADC member states, private firms or individual entrepreneurs in agribusiness to gain a foothold.

Both parties to the joint permanent commission will have discerned the sense in electing to do as much by variously putting the zone to more noticeable economic use – and affording it the chance to know sustainable peace and harmony.