Recommended Reading on Mozambique

To order hardcopies from World Bank publications on Mozambique, please visit the World Bank's Infoshop or Publications on Mozambique.  The Development Gateway also offers specific selections on this country at DG Mozambique Bookstore.  A third source, AWEPA (European Parlamentarians for Africa), publishes a Mozambique Peace Process Bulletin (also available in Portuguese: Boletim sobre o processo de paz em Moçambique). Parts of the following list of books about Mozambique are from their latest Bulletin (note - the views expressed in the books below do not always reflect the views of the World Bank Group):

"Moçambique: 10 Anos de Paz", edited by Brazão Mazula, CEDE (Centro de Estudos de Democracia e Desenvolvimento), Maputo: 2002. 523 pp.

Different positions on current debates in Mozambique on economy and democracy are presented in a book edited by Universidade Eduardo Mondlane rector Brazão Mazula, and published 30 October 2002. 

Of course the book reflects the successes of 10 years of peace. But it also presents some strong warnings. Several writers point to continuing weaknesses in Mozambican democracy

Some writers note that rapid GDP growth in not being translated into development of the majority, and gaps between rich and poor are widening. Prakash Ratilal warns that the income of most people has not changed since the end of the war, and that peace cannot be built on poverty and growing inequality. Agricultural economist Isilda Nhantumbo points to the relative lack of success of Mozambican rural development in the past decade, and warns that without urgent action "Mozambique could celebrate a second decade of peace without the ordinary citizens feeling they are benefiting from development." 

"A History of Postcolonial Lusophone Africa", edited by Patrick Chabal. Hurst, London: 2002. pp 339, UK£14.95.

Malyn Newitt's 50-page chapter on Mozambique in this book is one of the best summaries and analyses of the post-independence period and should be required reading for anyone going to work in Mozambique. The main weakness of his excellent A History of Mozambique (Hurst 1995) was that he effectively stopped at independence, and this chapter elegantly fills that gap. As a historian, Newitt is particularly good at highlighting trends, bringing together the economic and political, and linking domestic decisions to international politics. He is provocative in putting Renamo's war in the context of similar 19th century actions.

The Lusophone countries came to independence together as a result of independence wars which eventually ended fascism in Portugal. But their post-independence courses have been very different. Patrick Chabal compares Mozambique and Angola, and argues that Frelimo had a unity and coherence and "was the single legitimate voice of independent Mozambique", whereas the MPLA lacked legitimacy and coherence and had to fight for hegemony. The division of Angola's nationalists was not the result of ethnic divisions, "but rather the result of the inability of its elites to form a broad anti-colonial coalition. Conversely the unity of nationalist purpose in Mozambique was achieved against considerably larger odds." As a result, Frelimo could be flexible and pragmatic, "whilst the MPLA remained obdurately Stalinist." This, in turn, had an impact in the 1990s, with Renamo only wanting a place in a political order dominated by Frelimo, and Dhlakama only wanting "a share of the spoils".

Both Chabal and Newitt are caustic about foreign involvement. Chabal warns that in Mozambique "the constraints of structural adjustment are so severe as to jeopardise the very viability of the country". Newitt talks of Mozambique being "virtually a protectorate of the United Nations" during 1992-94 and being "under the yoke of the IMF" subsequently.

"Mozambique and the Construction of the New African State", by Chris Alden. Palgrave, Basingstoke (England): 2001. pp 166, UK£ 45.

Alden's book costs three times as much and is less clear and less interesting that Chabal and Newitt (above). Alden looks at the "international intervention into virtually all aspects of Mozambican political and economic life" over the past 15 years, and warns of a growing gap between the actual situation and what international community claims it has achieved. He notes that "the international community's desire to identify with success in an otherwise beleaguered intervention record in Africa put it increasingly in a position as 'captive' of the exigencies of the Mozambican situation" including "the willingness to turn a blind eye to rise in corruption". 

The book gives an overview of intervention from the mid-1980s, and arguments in the final chapter are provocative. But the book seems to have been written in haste and has a number of errors. To give two examples. Rural Mozambicans live on less than $1 per day, not $12 a day as he says (p 120). And he claims a Minister of Agriculture was jailed for 22 years (p 119), when the reference he cites says it was just a ministry official.

Security and Development in Southern Africa", edited by Nana Poku. Praeger, London: 2001. 166 pp, UK£49.50 hb

The 1990s and the end of apartheid may have brought peace to southern Africa, but this has not brought security, according to this book. The threat is not military or external, but the unresolved problems of poverty and marginalisation.

"The region is quite literally being left behind in terms of the spoils of globalization. The promised advantages of economic restructuring as hailed by the leading international funding bodies at the beginning of the 1990s have not been borne out," say Nana Poku and Wayne Edge. "It is inescapable that the gaps between rich and poor have increased markedly", notes Stephen Chan, while Poku argues that any hope that the benefits of globalisation "will eventually trickle down [is] an exercise in delusion." Structural adjustment has weakened states in the region, notes Maxi Schoeman. "Small, weak, debt-distressed states are a recipe for regional instability in the long run", warn Larry Swatuk and Peter Vale.

Faced with this crisis, instead of opting for regional solutions, national elites guard state sovereignty as a limited source of wealth and power, and liberal democracy in southern Africa has become little more than electing elites, Poku's authors find. "States in the region are sources of insecurity because they are 'predator' states that, through their control over their societies, have managed to extract wealth for the personal gain of state incumbents," conclude Anthony Leysens and Lisa Thompson. Fredrik Söderbaum goes further, and argues that "multiparty elections do not by themselves 'create' democracy, and as long as many of the political regimes remain authoritarian, centralistic, exclusivist and sometimes corrupt, the state-driven regional cooperation projects, including SADC … will continue to serve authoritarian and militaristic, rather than democratic, interests."

"Economic Change, Governance & Natural Resource Wealth: The Political Economy of Change in Southern Africa", by David Reed. Earthscan, London: 2001. 168pp. UK£15.95.

David Reed, director of WWF International's Macro-economics Programme Office, argues that control of natural resources has simply been transferred to foreign companies and domestic elites. When southern African states controlled resources, often in the name of socialism, they wanted to extract maxi-mum income to use for development projects. Now governments discard environmental restrictions to encourage foreign investment. Reed warns that "replacing state rent-seeking in natural resource sectors with private rent-seeking cannot provide the economic foundations" for development. 

"Poverty Reduction: What Role for the State in Today's Globalized Economy?" edited by Frances Wilson, Nazneen Kanji & Einar Braathen. Zed, London: 2001. pp372, UK£ 16.95.

Despite its more general title, this book focuses on southern Africa. In a well-argued essay, Archie Mafeje says that in land surplus countries (such as Mozambique) investment should be directed toward poorer peasant farmers rather than richer capital-intensive farmers. The poor are more productive and save more as a percentage of income, while their productivity can be raised substantially by relatively smaller investment. This would lead to a "trickle-up" strategy for national development.

In a chapter on Mozambique, Einar Braathen and Alessandro Palmero say that "anti-poverty policies are designed and implemented without taking into consideration the beneficiaries' point of view and their needs. … [T]he nature and scope of the poverty problem tends to get defined externally." Civil society is sometimes involved in monitoring anti-poverty programmes, but not in defining them. The conclusion: "most programmes against poverty have failed because we have preconceived ideas of what the poor need."

But Braathen and Palmero find two important exceptions. "The new land law of 1997 might have been the most important pro-poor reform put in place under the new government", because the very active role of peasant and other associations made the law more pro-poor. And the new elected "municipalities enjoy the participation of civil society in terms of injection of skills and knowledge".