RIYADH: Mozambique is shaping up to be Africa's brightest rising star, with rich resources and outstanding potential for tourism.
That's the view of Adel Aujan, chairman of the Saudi-based Aujan Group, who is already the largest investor in tourism in the country. Through a subsidiary, Rani Resorts, the Aujan Group operates five destinations in Mozambique, including the flagship Indigo Bay Resort & Spa, ranked by Tatler magazine as one of the top 100 spas in the world.
"There's just so much potential beyond tourism," Aujan said on the eve of the Gulf Africa Investment Conference, to be held in Riyadh and in which he will participate. "Mozambique offers great opportunities and is rich in mineral resources, gas & oil, agriculture, infrastructure development among many others," he said. Since the country's civil war ended in 1992, the Mozambican economy has been among the fastest-growing in the world, with an average annual GDP growth of about eight percent.
Under the leadership of Armando Emilio Guebuza, president of Mozambique since 2005 and one of the five African heads of state attending the Riyadh conference, the country has continued along a path of economic liberalization. Mozambique's agriculture minister, Jose Pacheco, will be a panelist on the summit's key group sessions focused on agriculture.
For Aujan, Africa isn't just an investment opportunity, it's a driving passion. "When I first set sight on an African sunset, I was hooked," he said. That passion led him to begin investing in tourism on the continent some 10 years ago. He is proud that Rani Resorts is a large employer of local staff, and is also genuinely motivated by a desire to spur prosperity for those who live in the regions he invests in.
Apart from the flagship Indigo Bay Island Resort and Spa on Bazaruto Island, the company operates Matemo Island and Medjumbe Private Island in the Quirimbas Archipelago in the north of the country, Pemba Beach Hotel and Spa in Pemba, the capital city of the northern province of Cabo Delgado and Lugenda Wilderness Camp - an exclusive tented wilderness camp in the Niassa Province.
Rani Resorts also owns the boutique hotel, The Stanley and Livingstone at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, and the intimate 3-star retreat Old Ursula Camp, situated within the Victoria Falls Private Game Reserve.
Aujan believes Arab businessmen are simply better at understanding the nuances of commercial life in Eastern Africa. After all, he says, the name Mozambique derives from the name of a neighboring island named after a prominent Arab trader, Mussa Bin Bique, who lived there in antiquity.
"Gulf Arabs have been trading here for centuries," he says. "As the possibilities in Africa open up, I think it's only natural that businessmen from the Gulf lead the way in. We have strong historic and cultural ties with the countries, the cities and the people all the way along the coast."
For Gulf investors, one of the most attractive sectors in Mozambique is agriculture. Contributing a quarter of its GDP, it is the mainstay of Mozambique's economy. Yet the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization says only 12 percent of the 36 million hectares of potential farmland in Mozambique is under cultivation. As such, the country has been a magnet for farmers from neighboring Zimbabwe and South Africa.
Aujan is convinced that Gulf investment will ultimately be a force for good in Mozambique and the continent as a whole. "The theme of this summit is that Africa and the Gulf can work together in a mutually beneficial way," he says.
"Our job over the next couple of days will be to work out ways to collaborate and serve our common interests. This is about investing in potential and investing in a nation's future."
© Arab News 2010
