With no official titles, two businessmen have emerged as gatekeepers to foreign capital, raising alarms about sovereignty and corruption.
By Foreign Correspondent
In a nondescript office just steps from Mozambique’s presidential palace in Maputo, a businessman known as “Cantona” conducts what amounts to parallel diplomacy.
Alcides Viegas Chihono, a man with no ministerial portfolio, no seat in parliament, and no official mandate, has positioned himself at the intersection of foreign capital and state power.
When investors seek approval for multimillion-dollar projects, when deals require presidential blessing, they are quietly advised to check in with Chihono.
His counterpart operates through a different channel entirely. Ingilo Dalsuco, a property developer and the son-in-law of imprisoned former finance minister Manuel Chang, has sold the Mozambican state at least 800 million meticais (roughly $12.5 million) in real estate since 2015.
The properties include buildings now housing provincial courts, the anti-corruption office, and the national telecommunications regulator.
Together, these two men have become emblematic of what critics describe as Mozambique’s “informal empire”: a shadow governance system in which proximity to power outweighs institutional process, and where foreign capital flows with minimal scrutiny.
For Mozambique, a gas-rich nation of 35 million people with fragile institutions—the risks are profound.
The visibility problem
On paper, Mozambique’s foreign investment approval process is straightforward. The Agency for Investment Promotion and Exports (APIEX) reviews applications, relevant ministries provide opinions within seven business days, and an investment certificate is issued.
In practice, seasoned investors and officials describe a parallel reality.
Since assuming office in mid-January 2025, President Daniel Chapo has personally launched or publicly endorsed several major foreign-backed projects: a $2 billion housing development by Hong Kong’s Phoenix International Group; a 240,000-barrel-per-day oil refinery by Nigeria’s Aiteo Group; and $333 million in Chinese-funded cement production. Public disclosure of bidding processes or competitive procurement has been scant.
Chihono’s name appears nowhere in official records. But investors consistently describe him as indispensable to opening doors.
“He claims to be close to Chapo,” a source within the state oil company ENH told Zitamar News, referring to what the source described as a “Nigerian lobby” operating inside the firm. “And certainly, he is in a literal sense. His office is located a few steps away from the presidency building.”
The same reporting noted that Chihono asserts ties to Mozambique’s security services, a claim that, if accurate, would place him among a small circle of trusted power brokers in a country where the security apparatus has historically shielded ruling elites from accountability.
Dalsuco’s activities are more readily traceable. Property records show that his company, Investimentos Imobiliários, Lda, has sold multiple buildings to provincial governments at prices critics describe as inflated.
In March 2024, the Inhambane Provincial Directorate of Planning and Finance awarded a 269-million-meticais contract to Dalsuco’s firm for a two-storey building “opposite the facilities of the State Information and Security Service.”
The purchase involved no competitive public tender.
Similar non-transparent acquisitions have placed Dalsuco-linked properties in use by the provincial court, the National Communications Institute, and, rich in irony, the provincial anti-corruption office. Civil society groups have repeatedly called for investigations. None have materialised.
The institutional vacuum
Mozambique’s inability to curb these informal power structures reflects not a single failure, but systemic capture by the ruling Frelimo party, which has governed continuously since independence in 1975.
The opposition holds just 72 of the 250 seats in parliament. Frelimo dominates the judiciary, the electoral commission, and the Attorney General’s office, whose head is appointed by the president for a five-year term.
The Central Office for Combating Corruption (GCCC) is housed within the Attorney General’s office itself, an arrangement international governance analyst has long flagged as problematic.
As one assessment noted, “the spectre of political influence in the manner it executes its mandate lurks in the background, since oversight of its functions lies with the Attorney General, who is also a political appointee of the President.”
This concentration of power has costly precedent.
Between 2013 and 2014, three state-owned companies, Proindicus, EMATUM, and MAM, contracted more than $2 billion in fraudulent loans secretly guaranteed by then finance minister Manuel Chang. Abu Dhabi-based shipbuilder Privinvest served as sole contractor, over-invoicing equipment by more than $700 million. Chang received at least $7 million in bribes.
The scandal triggered a currency collapse, forced the IMF to suspend its programme, and led 14 international donors to withdraw direct budget support. By 2019, the economic damage exceeded $11 billion. Chang now serves an eight-and-a-half-year sentence in a U.S. federal prison.
Yet his family network, connected through Dalsuco, continues to operate within Mozambique’s business landscape, suggesting that the vulnerabilities exposed by the hidden debt scandal remain largely unaddressed.
The new investment wave
The rise of Chihono and Dalsuco as de facto gatekeepers coincides with renewed investor interest in Mozambique, particularly in energy, real estate, and infrastructure.
Nigeria’s Aiteo Group, which operates Africa’s largest private oil company, secured a stake in Mozambique’s Mazenga gas block in January 2024. Six months later, President Chapo publicly championed a 240,000-barrel-per-day refinery project involving Aiteo, the state oil company Petromoc, and an American engineering firm.
The announcement bore the hallmarks of executive prerogative rather than competitive procurement.
Similarly, Phoenix International Group began construction in early 2025 on a $2 billion residential complex near Maputo, branded “Fénix.” Chapo personally launched the project in April, praising Phoenix’s experience in Angola and stating that the company had been specifically invited to replicate its Angolan model in Mozambique.
The project promises 25,000 jobs. No public tender documentation has been made available. Government officials defer inquiries to the president’s public remarks.
Chinese investment has also accelerated under the new administration. Following an October 2024 investment conference in Xi’an, Mozambique and China agreed to co-invest $333 million in two cement factories, a quay bridge, and hospital upgrades in Nampula and Cabo Delgado.
The companies involved and ownership structures were not immediately disclosed; feasibility studies remain pending.
Each project carries strategic significance. The refinery could reduce fuel imports and anchor a regional energy hub. The housing development addresses chronic shortages. Expanded cement capacity would underpin infrastructure growth.
Still all raise the same governance questions: How were these investments selected? Who made the final decisions? And why do experienced investors consistently cite informal intermediaries as essential to accessing senior officials?
The sovereignty question
Mozambique’s 2024 presidential election, officially won by Chapo with 65 percent of the vote according to the Constitutional Council, was marred by allegations of fraud. Opposition candidate Venâncio Mondlane disputed the outcome.
Security forces’ suppression of post-election protests left more than 300 people dead.
The political context is critical. Chapo, relatively unknown nationally, emerged as a compromise candidate chosen by Frelimo’s senior leadership to preserve party continuity. Civil society analysts argue that “the old guard placed him in power to protect and promote their interests.”
Within this framework, informal power brokers who link the presidency to domestic elites and foreign investors perform a vital function: facilitating capital inflows while preserving plausible deniability over how decisions are made.
The danger, as one governance report warned, is stark. “When money flows in without control, the country loses sovereignty and institutions cease to serve the people, instead serving private interests.”
Mozambique has already travelled this road. The hidden debt scandal demonstrated how weak oversight and the fusion of state power with private ambition can devastate fiscal stability and international credibility.
The accountability gap
Mozambique’s Public Probity Law requires asset declarations from senior officials. Yet those declarations are reviewed by the Attorney General’s office, accessible only to parties with “justified interest,” and barred from public disclosure.
Officials are expected to self-report conflicts of interest, an approach international observers describe as “highly exploitable and susceptible to corruption.”
When the GCCC investigates powerful figures, it does so within an office controlled by a presidential appointee. As one analysis concluded, “enforcement is lax due to Frelimo party elites being at the epicentre of corruption networks.”
Investigative journalism might fill the gap. But Mozambique’s press operates under persistent threat.
In 2000, journalist Carlos Cardoso, who was investigating corruption in banking and real estate, was murdered. The investigation that followed was incomplete and politically compromised.
In December 2023, newspaper editor João Fernando Chamusse was killed at his home. Journalists report ongoing intimidation and death threats, particularly during election periods.
As the Committee to Protect Journalists noted in its analysis of the Cardoso case, while Mozambique once appeared to host a competitive media environment, “press freedom has been deeply compromised.”
The pattern
Whether Chihono’s influence or Dalsuco’s property empire will withstand scrutiny remains uncertain. Neither man has been charged with a crime. The Attorney General has announced no investigations.
The president’s office did not respond to requests for comment on the role of informal advisers in investment approvals.
Aiteo, Phoenix International, and Chinese state entities did not respond to detailed inquiries regarding how their projects were approved.
But the pattern is unmistakable.
Two men with no formal mandate, operating with minimal public accountability, have positioned themselves as indispensable intermediaries between foreign capital and state power.
They thrive in a system that concentrates authority in the presidency, subordinates oversight institutions to party control, and restricts public scrutiny.
They also thrive in a country where past governance failures, from the hidden debt scandal to disputed elections, have weakened, rather than reformed, the institutions meant to prevent such arrangements.
“Proximity to power is worth more than any résumé, merit, or skill,” one assessment of Chihono’s rise observed.
For Mozambique, a nation rich in resources but poor in institutional resilience, that observation is less a diagnosis than a warning.
The country can attract capital. What remains uncertain is whether it can absorb that capital, and the influence that comes with it, without sacrificing the institutional integrity that fragile democracies can least afford to lose.
