Maputo, April 15, 2026 (Lusa) - The European Union (EU) has provided €120 million over 30 years to support culture, employment, economic governance, and justice in Portuguese-speaking African countries (PALOP) and Timor-Leste, said Mário Ngwenya, representative of the EU-PALOP and Timor-Leste Partnership Coordination, on Wednesday.
He was speaking on the sidelines of the technical meeting in Maputo between Portuguese-speaking African countries (PALOP) and Timor-Leste, a meeting aimed at reviewing the progress and performance of ongoing projects.
He said that the funding had supported more than 20 regional projects covering diverse areas such as public finance, employment, trade, public administration, statistics, digitalisation, elections and public health.
He revealed that the group, comprising Angola, Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Timor-Leste, was now seeking EU funding for a dedicated education programme.
“What we would like, if funds were available, is for the EU to provide support in the area of education, which is a fundamental area, but financial constraints and restrictions do not allow for this”, he said.
“However, we have raised this concern and would like to see another project in the area of education.”
“Education is the foundation, it is training, so we believe it would indeed be important,” he added.
Improvements in relations between these bodies, with a call for them to become increasingly solid and resilient, were also objectives.
João Amaral, representing the political presidency of the PALOP and Timor-Leste countries, said that working with a cohesive regional bloc was not merely a political choice, but a strategic and operational advantage, adding that the regional dimension enabled them to generate benefits, share knowledge, harmonise solutions, and increase the impact of their interventions.
"Our shared history, the Portuguese language and the similarity of our administrative systems mean that solutions developed in one country can be replicated and adapted in others, at reduced cost and with greater effectiveness," he said.
Additionally, he said that it was essential for cooperation to ensure the continuity and sustainability of the partnership with the EU, adding that a discontinuation of the programmes would jeopardise the group's cohesion, the sustainability of structural reforms in progress, and the institutional and human safeguards that had been established over the past 30 years.
"We cannot allow a return to fragmented bilateralism; on the contrary, we must consolidate and deepen the regional added value that characterises this partnership," he said.
On 5 March, the EU announced in Maputo that it was providing €10 million for a new Procultura programme to promote employment in the cultural sector in the PALOP and Timor-Leste, with Portugal's Camões Cooperation Institute continuing the implementation.
“The idea is that this was a good project which laid solid foundations, but these also need to be nurtured and consolidated,” said Duarte Graça, chargé d’affaires at the EU Delegation in Mozambique, on the sidelines of the results' presentation and the closing of Procultura, which ran from 1 April 2019 and ended on 31 March 2026.
The EU is also providing €10 million in funding for the Pro JUST PALOP-TL project, which focusses on strengthening the rule of law, with particular emphasis on the criminal justice system, the fight against corruption, organised crime, and the digitisation of systems, scheduled to end in 2029.
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