Paper short abstract:

In post-socialist African cities like Maputo, land commodification is creating a Sisyphean dilemma in urban development by fueling imbalanced contest between the construction of fantastic infrastructure serving elites and ordinary infrastructure targeting the still unmet needs of the poor.

Paper long abstract:

In post-socialist African cities like Maputo, land commodification is enabling a starkly imbalanced contest between the development of fantastic infrastructure serving elites and rather ordinary infrastructure projects serving the basic (still unmet) needs of the poor. More specifically, this paper argues that the simultaneous implementation of a municipal participatory budgeting reform for basic capital investments and a large-scale infrastructure and real estate development plan (supported by national government and foreign capital) in the same physical space has created a Sisyphean dilemma. Just as small gains in ordinary infrastructure investments (e.g., wells, paved roads, etc.) are made through participatory budgets, larger projects (e.g., bridges, high-rise residential buildings, tourist facilities, etc.) funded by more expansive capital budgets are wiping out those gains in the same neighborhoods. In contexts of weak democracy, this simultaneous implementation of 'fantastic' and 'ordinary' infrastructure projects through the assignment of different funding mechanisms to them deepens difference and inequalities among extant poor and anticipated wealthier residents in Maputo. I also argue that fantastic plans and participatory budgeting initiatives are constitutive parts of the commodification agenda in post-Socialist states like Mozambique, as the latter politically enables the power behind former, while the former physically eviscerates gains made with the latter.