Paper short abstract:

While Mozambican elites pay lip service to resource nationalism and developmentalism, the deals struck are poor and policies strikingly undeveloped. But there might be much instrumentality in and rents to reap from ‘poor deals’ and from uneven development itself.

Paper long abstract:

With its massive gas reserves, Mozambique is set to become one of Africa’s leading gas exporters within the coming decade. Based on data collected through recent fieldwork – with Total’s emerging LNG mega-project in Cabo Delgado and gas projects in Inhambane as cases – this paper explores the emerging political economy of Mozambique as petro-state. We employ the standard ‘resource curse’ script to explore how public agency, civil society organisations, and external actors convene in attempts to ensure fair deal vis-a-vis IOCs; build means of transparent and accountable revenue managament; and to prevent enclave development by way of prescribing local contents etc. However, such scripts are inadequate on their own – the emerging political economy must be seen against the backdrop of Mozambique’s particular political settlement. While elites pay lip service to ‘resource nationalism’ and ‘developmentalism’, the deals struck are frail and policies remain strikingly underdeveloped. But this might indeed be functional for elites – there is much instrumentality in and rents to reap from ‘poor deals’ and from uneven development itself.