A Japanese-built electric vehicle battery factory could propel Mozambique ahead of neighbouring South Africa in the race to add value to local mineral wealth by manufacturing components for electric vehicles.Mozambique’s plans date to November 2019 when the government hosted a multi-stakeholder workshop to draft a national electric mobility strategy.One of the outcomes of the workshop was a recommendation for the government to lay the foundations for the market by using electric vehicles (EVs) for public transport, starting in Maputo.Fuelling Mozambique’s drive to become an EV manufacturing hub is its reserves of minerals, particularly graphite, as well as the availability of renewable energy.Hydropower currently accounts for about 81% of installed capacity.In May, transport and communications minister Mateus Magala invited a visiting Japanese business delegation to build a gigafactory.Japan helped fund the upgrade of the Port of Nacala as well as a gas-fired emergency power plant. “Mozambique wants EV batteries to be produced here in order to respond to the electric bus import programme scheduled for later this year, but also to respond to the electric vehicle assembly project, a plant for which will be set up soon,” he said.At present Mozambican graphite is connecting batteries made in the United States. In February the government announced plans to set up an assembly line for electric passenger transport buses.“ Ta k ing advantage of the country’s potential in the mineral resources and energy sector, which could be exploited with the transformation of graphite for the production of lithium batteries used for electric cars and the existence of sufficient amounts of energy in the country, the government, through the Ministry of Transport and Communications with a private partner, intends to set up an electric bus assembly plant in the country that will, in a first phase, assemble around 1 000 buses,” the Ministry of Industry and Commerce said in a statement.The potential of African countries to leapfrog internal combustion technology to set up electric vehicle assembly and component manufacturing plants is promoted in a United Nations Conference on Trade and Development Economic Development in Africa Report 2023 titled The Potential of Africa to Capture Technology-Intensive Global Supply Chains.“Mozambique has all the necessary strengths to engage in a production process that could provide value addition in a low-carbon transition, with a logistics system that is not encumbered by legacy high-carbon-emissions infrastructure.”
