The protected Bay of Pemba in northern Mozambique may look like a sea of tranquility, but this area is surging with change.
As boats bob just outside the port terminal dedicated to oil and gas companies, commercial divers check the welds and make sure the barges are ship shape.
One of them is Cremildo Marsena. “To become a diver is something that I had as a dream,” he says. “It’s good money, which makes me happy…Mozambicans love the sea and we have to stand up and try to make money when it’s the time to make money.”
In Pemba, the time to make money is now. Major gas reserves have been identified off the coast and big multinationals, who started drilling in 2010, have started to transform the region’s economy.
According to Standard Bank, Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) will add $39 billion to the Mozambican economy over the next 20 years, boosting GDP per capita from approximately $650 in 2013, to $4500 by 2035.
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“The Mozambicans have employed a very very high profile department of environmental affairs and they’re really looking into the background of the oil and gas as to what effect it’s going to have on the population,” explains Bevis. “Now that the new president [Filipe Nyusi] is in, we just see progress…that’s what we want and that’s what we see.”
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