Evelyn Dietsche at IMD Round Table on Extractive Industries in Mozambique

Evelyn Dietsche — co-author of WIDER Working Paper ‘What are the prospects for Mozambique to diversify its economy on the back of ‘local content’?’ (2018) and the related journal article ‘Local content and the prospects for economic diversification in Mozambique’ (in Mining for Change: Natural Resources and Industry in Africa, 2020), both produced under the Inclusive growth in Mozambique (IGM) programme — participates in a virtual round table on the role of local content in promoting economic development and employment in Mozambique on 12 August 2021.

Organized online by the Instituto para Democracia Multipartidária (IMD), the event, entitled ‘Virtual Round Table on Local Content in promoting national development: Status of the draft Law on Local Content in Mozambique’ gathers policy makers and private sector and civil society representatives to discuss the opportunities and challenges of extractive industries in Mozambique, with the objective of feeding into the preparation of the new law on local content.

The key message of Dietsche’s paper is that the country urgently needs institutional changes that support broader and rural-focused private sector development. This would be the condition for local content to provide the much-needed link between the extractive industries and the diversification of the local economy.