Mozambique: State needs €469M to rebuild post-election protest damage

Mozambique needs 35 billion meticais (€469.3 million) to rebuild infrastructure destroyed during post-election protests in Mozambique, according to government data. According to the minister, “a country cannot develop” with riots, claiming that the post-election demonstrations from October 2024 to March 2025 caused the country to take “many steps backwards”. “If asked, I would say that we have regressed to the 1980s or slightly earlier,” he said, reiterating that Mozambique and no other country deserves to live in such insecurity.

At issue are protests called at the time by former presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane, who rejects the results of the October 2024 elections that gave Daniel Chapo victory as Mozambique’s fifth president, in which more than 400 people died in clashes with the police. In December, the Mozambican president described the period of protests as the worst electoral crisis ever experienced in the country, as “deep pain” for Mozambicans, experienced by thousands of people who saw their property vandalised and destroyed and their security threatened. “The demonstrations forced the permanent or temporary closure of businesses, resulting in the loss of more than 50,000 jobs,” he said, pointing to the reduction in revenue collection for the state in the face of vandalism.

A total of 7,200 people were arrested during the protests, according to data from the Decide platform, released in October, one year after the protests began. The violence in Mozambique ceased after a first meeting in March between Daniel Chapo and Venâncio Mondlane, and a pacification process is underway, which provides for a government commitment to carry out various reforms, including to the Constitution and electoral laws. In April, Chapo promulgated the law on the Political Commitment to an Inclusive National Dialogue, approved days earlier in parliament, based on the agreement with political parties signed on 5 March to overcome the crisis that followed the general elections on 9 October.