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Paper short abstract:

Idolized upon independence yet subjected to suspicions ever since, Angola's rural populations have remained dependent on an aloof MPLA to transform their socio-economic plight. Yet the party's modus operandi has adopted colonial visions to prepare the terrain for a new elitist rural rent base.

Paper long abstract:

Angolan elites have long pointed to the colonial-era agricultural production as evidence that diversifying the economy towards rural spaces should encompass the future vision of the political economy. The MPLA (People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola) therefore looks to the past to inform its visions of the country's future. But the global commodities market has left Angola's agricultural sector behind and catching up would demand clear-eyed vision, frank realism, and a highly trained technocratic core. The more urgent goal of achieving food security would have to come before vintage visions of becoming a leader in global agriculture once again.

In furtherance of this objective, the government has bet big on spatial transformations through major infrastructure initiatives to ease rural mobility and the occupation of key agricultural spaces with major agro-industrial State farms in partnership with Chinese loans and companies. If managed correctly, these investments have the potential to initiate radiating development poles, lifting up the heretofore neglected rural populations. Otherwise, they could transform into "white elephant" investments, diverting endless public resources and stirring up local resentment

Either way, by betting big on transforming rural spaces by funneling major public investment into State farms, the MPLA has engaged a diversionary rural political economy that directs rural rent accumulation through the party's control, thus strengthening its political hold in new spaces. Historically wary of rural entrepreneurs gaining political influence through economic largesse, the MPLA envisions a future countryside where it remains kingmaker through centralized channels of power and influence.