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Mozambique - US Relations

Mozambique has positive relations with the United States, which is the largest donor country. Mozambique is a focus country for the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and the Malaria Initiative. USAID donated US$290 million in 2009. Mozambique and the United States signed a Trade and Investment Framework in 2005 that built upon previous trade agreements to expand trade and investment between the two countries and formed a United States-Mozambican Council on Trade and Investment to address trade and investment issues such as environmental and labor problems. The United States has contributed military aid to Mozambique. The two countries also have numerous treaties in force, including defense, economic and technical cooperation, employment, finance, the International Criminal Court, investment, and the Peace Corps.

By 1993, U.S. aid to Mozambique was prominent, due in part to significant emergency food assistance in the wake of the 1991-93 southern African drought, but more importantly in support of the peace and reconciliation process. During the process leading up to elections in October 1994, the United States served as a significant financier and member of the most important commissions established to monitor implementation of the Rome General Peace Accords. The United States is the largest bilateral donor to the country and plays a leading role in donor efforts to assist Mozambique.

The U.S. Embassy opened in Maputo on November 8, 1975, and the first American ambassador arrived in March 1976. In that same year, the United States extended a $10 million grant to the Government of Mozambique to help compensate for the economic costs of enforcing sanctions against Rhodesia. In 1977, however, largely motivated by concern about human rights violations, the U.S. Congress prohibited the provision of development aid to Mozambique without a presidential certification that such aid would be in the foreign policy interests of the United States. Relations hit a nadir in March 1981, when the Government of Mozambique expelled four members of the U.S. Embassy staff. In response, the United States suspended plans to provide development aid and to name a new ambassador to Mozambique. Relations between the two countries languished in a climate of stagnation and mutual suspicion.

Contacts between the two countries continued in the early 1980s as part of the U.S. administration's conflict resolution efforts in the region. In late 1983, a new U.S. ambassador arrived in Maputo, and the first Mozambican envoy to the United States arrived in Washington, signaling a thaw in the bilateral relationship. The United States subsequently responded to Mozambique's economic reform and drift away from Moscow's embrace by initiating an aid program in 1984. President Samora Machel paid a symbolically important official working visit to the United States in 1985, where he met President Ronald Reagan. After that meeting, a full U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) mission was established, and significant assistance for economic reform efforts began.

The United States represents economic and political opportunity to many Africans who get their information from the media and from family and friends living in the United States. U.S. television programs and pop culture are also major influences.

Despite the low penetration rate of television and cinema, most Mozambicans have formed their preconceived notions about the United States, and U.S. citizens in general, from television shows or movies. Most Mozambicans think U.S. citizens are wealthy, Caucasian, blond haired, blue eyed, and sexually promiscuous. Non-Caucasian Americans may not be considered truly American by rural Mozambicans because of their skin color. Specifically, African-Americans may be expected to know, or at least pick up more quickly, the local language, and may be treated according to local customs as an indigenous African, as opposed to a visitor from another culture. Asian-Americans will likely be expected to know martial arts, or display other stereotypical traits found in movies. Hispanics are typically referred to as Cubanos or Mexicanos.

Western women may attract unwanted attention while in Mozambique, usually in the form of spontaneous marriage proposals and/or sometimes aggressive sexual advances. Women who live alone or who drink alone in bars are likely to develop a reputation among rural Mozambicans as being sad, lonely, and/or promiscuous.