Mozambican President Felipe Jacinto and Secretary Kerry Give Remarks

Photo: State Department

Treaty Room
Washington, DC
September 14, 2016

SECRETARY KERRY: Good morning, everybody. I am very happy to welcome President Nyusi of Mozambique to Washington. We look forward to discussions today about a number of different issues, but I want to congratulate the president on his personal commitment to biodiversity and conservation. He’s won awards for it; it’s been a significant initiative of his government and important. I’m also happy to welcome him because Mozambique happens to be the place of birth and where my wife, Teresa, was raised and lived for many, many years before she came to America. And so it’s a pleasure for me to have a chance to talk, and I personally am hoping very much to get to Mozambique before the end of my term here.

We also have to talk today about the serious challenge that Mozambique faces in terms of its economy, the need for transparency and accountability and moving on its fiscal and budget challenges, and we want to talk about that. And we also need to talk about how to reduce some of the levels of violence that have taken place in dealing with the opposition – opposition party. These are tough challenges – we know that – and I look forward to hearing from the president the thoughts about the road ahead.

Are we going to do translation or —

INTERPRETER: Yes, sir.

SECRETARY KERRY: I made that hard for you, didn’t I?

INTERPRETER: That’s okay. We had help with your notes.

SECRETARY KERRY: Okay. (Laughter.)

INTERPRETER: Thank you so much. (In Portuguese.)

PRESIDENT NYUSI: (Via interpreter) Well, thank you very much. I would also like to express my pleasure for meeting Secretary Kerry here. We’ve come to strengthen our very good and strategic relations between Mozambique and the United States of America and here we’ll be discussing a number of issues. Of course, we’ll be dealing with issues – we’ll share insights on the political situation in Mozambique as well as we will discuss on economic issues. I’ve brought along a team of businesspeople here because we intend to engage in economic diplomacy because this country has got a lot of experience and we believe we need to leverage our economic cooperation. And of course, there is another important agenda that brought me here, which is environmental diplomacy. So we are engaged in conservation and we will be dealing with these – these are issues we will be talking about. And of course, this country has got a lot of experiences in terms of democracy, transparency, best practices, and we will be sharing those best practices and we will be learning from one another on the experiences of diplomacy and managing institutions, transparency, (inaudible). So we will be exchanging all these.

So this is, again, a great opportunity to be here. Thank you very much.

SECRETARY KERRY: Muito obrigado.

PRESIDENT NYUSI: Muito obrigado. But I want to give him the passport to Maputo, to Mozambique. (Laughter.)