INVESTOR POLICY
The rehabilitation of Coutada 5, and especially the
wildlife re-introduction and social development
programs, will be an extremely expensive undertaking. To
rehabilitate existing protected areas, or as is the case
in Coutada 5 starting the development of a ‘new’
protected area virtually from scratch, normally falls
within the ambit of a government institution. Such
developments are funded by public money. The Republic of
Mozambique, whilst acknowledging the urgent need for
drastic improvement in the field of nature conservation,
unfortunately do not have the fiscal or human resources
available to rehabilitate the seriously over-exploited
protected areas of the country.
Private enterprises such as Africa Futura Wildlife
Restoration Lda will have to play an increasingly
important role in this regard. However, no private
company can be expected to fund the rehabilitation of an
official protected area, whilst still trying to operate
at a profit. Sources of income will thus have to be
developed as soon as possible, in order for the Company
to maintain liquidity and to prevent the venture from a
financial collapse.
The Company thus embarked on a system whereby some of
the natural resources on offer may be ‘privatised’, thus
enlisting the assistance of investors that will
ultimately help to carry the financial burden, as well
as to ensure the profitability of the respective
ventures. In the case of the 22 wildlife blocks that
have been approved by the Government of Mozambique, the
Company will endeavour to ‘sell’ each of the 22 blocks
to an interested investor. The end result will be a huge
fenced protected area of 210 000 ha in extent with prime
wildlife habitat, and stocked with a wide range of both
herbivore and carnivore species, collectively ‘owned’ by
22 different companies.
The same principle will be applied to the establishment
of a multiple use zone to the east of the EN1, where the
intention is to make a total area of 100 000 ha
available for extensive livestock ranching purposes. The
number of ‘ranches’ to be made available to investors
will be 20
units of 5 000 ha each. Each investor will be expected
to develop his own land.
In order to provide security of their investments to the
investors, both in the fields of wildlife and livestock,
so-called DUATS will be issued by the Government of
Mozambique, thus guaranteeing their long-term
contractual tenure of the respective tracts of land.’
 |
