The President of Mozambique, Daniel Chapo, said today that schools should teach students how to create jobs and help the country achieve economic independence, calling for education that enables pupils to “critically understand reality” in a context of digital transformation.
Speaking at the official opening of the 2026 school year in Beira, in central Mozambique, which coincided with the handover of the Esturro Basic School — the largest primary school in the country — Chapo recalled that the institution had previously pioneered a school mentoring programme aimed at identifying students’ vocational paths and professional options, preparing them for work and self-employment.
This school model is already being implemented in the provinces of Nampula, Cabo Delgado and Zambézia. Highlighting the initiative, the president said the following:
“For years we have been teaching our children only to be employees — that when they grow up they must look for a job. What we are doing is reversing this scenario, teaching children that they can also create jobs for their brothers and sisters, putting into their minds that they are not studying only to look for employment, but also to create employment and employ others.”
According to the head of state, the initiative, which aims to identify each student’s vocation, will help to “train employers” from an early age, breaking with the traditional model focused solely on producing employees. He argued that a free nation is built with citizens capable of understanding the world, creating, innovating and undertaking new ventures.
The Esturro Basic School is the largest primary school in Mozambique, with 46 classrooms and capacity for 4,600 students operating in two shifts. The project represented an investment of 4.8 million dollars (around four million euros) by the charity foundation Tzu Chi Mozambique.
Chapo stressed that education must take into account the rapid expansion of information and communication technologies, which are “profoundly transforming the educational landscape”. He said this transformation offers an opportunity to rethink teaching practices within a digital transformation framework aligned with the government’s vision — one that goes beyond transmitting content and instead helps people critically understand reality so it can be transformed.
The president also pledged to continue improving teachers’ working conditions, stating that “investing in education is investing in people” and that this path is essential for the country’s economic independence.
“If in the past school was the foundation for achieving political power, today it must be the foundation for economic power as a nation and as a people — the power to produce, innovate, industrialise, digitalise, undertake and compete and prosper,” he said, calling for schools to become the basis of Mozambique’s economic independence.
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Earlier in Beira, Chapo also handed over the Manga Secondary School, which had been destroyed by Cyclone Idai in 2019 and has now been rehabilitated. As with the Esturro school, he called on the community to ensure its preservation, warning against vandalism and theft of school property.
