Mozambique: A General Business Law Overview

Mozambique enters 2026 with a cautiously improving macro outlook, but with persistent constraints that continue to shape how businesses invest, finance operations and manage risk. The World Bank expects growth to remain subdued at 1.8% in 2025, strengthening to 3.0% in 2026 and 3.5% in 2027, citing post-electoral disruptions, fiscal pressures and foreign exchange shortages as key headwinds. These conditions keep cost of capital sensitivity high and make liquidity planning, pricing discipline and robust contracting more important than in a purely “growth-led” environment.

Activity Levels and Where Clients are Focusing

Market activity remains selective, with momentum most visible where public policy, infrastructure needs and capital intersect, particularly in energy, logistics-linked trade, and essential services. Many businesses are placing greater emphasis on governance, procurement controls, tax positions and dispute readiness, reflecting both administrative complexity and the practical friction of operating across provinces and borders. Foreign exchange availability remains a real constraint for importers and sectors with external payment chains, reinforcing the importance of documentary discipline, realistic payment timelines and careful management of contractual currency exposure.

Energy: A Central Sector, With Multiple Tracks

Energy remains a defining sector for Mozambique’s medium-term story, both in large-scale hydrocarbons and in the evolving agenda around electrification, renewables and transition finance. In January 2026, the Presidency presented Mozambique as an emerging energy and logistics pole in Southern Africa, highlighting “structuring projects” assessed at around USD50 billion, and the expected spillover effects on employment, fiscal revenues, infrastructure expansion and local business participation.

Natural gas

In natural gas, that same communication pointed to four major projects led by international operators: ENI’s Coral Sul and Coral Norte (valued at around USD15 billion) and projects led by TotalEnergies and ExxonMobil, each estimated at approximately USD20 billion. Alongside this, Mozambique’s national hydrocarbons company (ENH) has been presented as seeking partners for additional processing capacity to serve rising regional demand across SADC markets. For clients, the opportunity is not limited to upstream investment: it extends to contracting across services, logistics, local supply chains, workforce and training, and dispute prevention/management, particularly where multiple counterparties, long timelines and complex interface risk exist.

Power

On the power side, the investment narrative increasingly connects new capacity to regional integration, industrialisation and resilience. The Presidency highlighted a transition pathway anchored in large-scale hydropower, namely, Mphanda Nkuwa (planned capacity of 1,500 MW) and an additional Cahora Bassa North plant (estimated 400 MW, with completion projected for 2032), while also pointing to solar and wind as part of a broader sustainable growth agenda. For market participants, these plans have practical implications: bankable offtake arrangements, grid readiness and land/access issues often determine whether projects advance on schedule, and they influence how risks are allocated in EPC, O&M and supply contracts.

Renewables and climate-linked instruments

A related and increasingly visible strand is the growth of renewables and climate-linked instruments. Mozambique has been engaging on carbon-market frameworks and, according to AIM, authorities have advanced licensing for emissions-reduction projects and conducted consultations around carbon-market regulation. For investors, this adds a complementary layer to the energy story: projects are increasingly assessed not only for generation output, but also for resilience, emissions intensity and alignment with transition-related financing criteria.

Policy Direction and “Doing Business” Implications: Logistics and Trade

Policy priorities are increasingly centred on logistics as a driver of competitiveness. In that context, work is underway to develop Mozambique’s National Logistics Strategy, supported by World Bank-financed data gathering and carried out in close co-ordination with the Ministry of Transport and Logistics. The commercial significance is straightforward: Mozambique’s corridor model can reduce time-to-market for regional trade and resource-linked supply chains, but reliability depends on execution, port performance, border processes, road/rail bottlenecks and institutional co-ordination. Over the next year, clients are likely to focus on practical de-risking measures such as clearer logistics service-level commitments, more robust remedies for delay, and better-aligned insurance and force-majeure provisions across the contracting chain.

On the trade side, late-2025 measures introduced temporary quantitative restrictions on the import of certain goods under Decree No 51/2025 (29 December). This has sharpened the need for early procurement planning, supplier diversification and flexibility on specifications. It has also increased the value of contract structures that anticipate substitution, phased deliveries, and price adjustments where inputs or transport costs change materially. For businesses that rely heavily on imports, compliance and documentation are becoming as important as commercial terms, given that delays or classification issues can have outsized operational consequences.

Climate and Operational Resilience

Climate risk is not an abstract theme in Mozambique; it is a recurring operational factor. A World Bank climate risk profile highlights frequent extreme events such as droughts, floods and tropical cyclones, as well as risks linked to sea-level rise and storm surge in populated coastal areas. For business, the direction of travel is clear: more emphasis on resilience in logistics and asset siting, stronger contingency planning, reviewed force-majeure and insurance provisions, and redundancy in critical suppliers and routes. Climate exposure also shapes project scheduling assumptions and can influence stakeholder expectations around environmental performance, particularly in infrastructure and energy-adjacent work.

Regulatory Baseline: Investment Framework

Mozambique’s Private Investment Law (Law No 8/2023) updated the framework for private investment, including the general basis for guarantees and incentives – although, in practice, implementation and administrative capacity often determine how quickly investment plans translate into operational reality.

Outlook

For 2026, Mozambique’s opportunity set is real but disciplined. While near-term macroeconomic conditions remain constrained, the country enters the year at an important inflection point, with the medium-term investment outlook increasingly shaped by anticipated developments in the LNG sector and associated infrastructure. The direction of travel is clearer: renewed momentum in energy is expected to act as a primary catalyst for growth, capital inflows and broader commercial activity.

Market attention is focused on the expected resumption of Area 1 LNG project activities, which would mark a transition from stabilisation to execution. Even a phased restart is likely to generate immediate knock-on effects across engineering, logistics, local supply chains, workforce mobilisation and professional services. For investors and contractors, the opportunity lies less in first-mover advantage and more in execution readiness, given the scale, duration and interface complexity of the projects involved.

In parallel, Area 4 remains the most immediate source of large-scale investment, with the potential for further capital commitments emerging toward the end of the second quarter of 2026. Progress at this stage would reinforce Mozambique’s position as a strategic LNG hub for Southern Africa and provide greater visibility on project continuity, sovereign alignment and operating conditions. These developments are also expected to support downstream investment across power generation, transmission infrastructure, ports and regional trade corridors.

Overall, Mozambique’s 2026 outlook favours disciplined, project-led investment rather than broad-based expansion. The investment narrative is increasingly framed around energy capacity (gas and power) and logistics performance, while the principal constraints remain execution risk, foreign exchange frictions, regulatory process timelines and climate-related disruption. Businesses that tend to perform best are those combining commercial ambition with practical risk controls: realistic timelines, strong compliance, robust contract management, careful FX and supply-chain planning, and investment in operational resilience. For such players, 2026 offers a credible pathway into the next phase of Mozambique’s energy-driven growth cycle.