Your search

A propitiously timed household survey carried out in Mozambique over the period 2008/ 2009 permits us to study the relationship between shifts in food prices and child nutrition status in a low income setting. We focus on weight-for-height and weight-for-age in different survey quarters characterized by very different food price inflation rates. Using propensity score matching techniques, we find that these nutrition measures, which are sensitive in the short run, improve significantly in...

This report relates to urbanisation as it is currently happening in Mozambique. It explores the present situation of cities and the government’s planned urbanisation strategy. It also discusses how the country plans to transition to a majority urban population. The report also discusses the impact of the urbanisation strategy on the regional development of the country through the promotion of growth corridors. To discuss this message, Future Cities Africa has selected three cities along the...

When residents of Chimoio and Honde talk of the forceful and potentially perilous dimensions of spirits, healing, and illness, they frequently relate them to <i>tchianhu wo atewe.</i> Spirits, which embody various potencies and capacities, are integral to diurnal and nocturnal lives in urban and rural contexts alike. As shown previously, a wide range of spirits exhibit dynamics of re-/deterritorialization. Further, people relate to ancestral spirits, so-called <i>vadzimu,</i> in annual...

Ethnography harbors the power of critique—political, social, and theoretical. Ultimately a capacity to destabilize, this orientation also applies when writing an account of the violence inherent to processes of state formation in Mozambique. While such critical potential may be realized in a number of ways, here I have privileged perspectives forged on the margins of the centers of power, supplemented by historical sources. But there is more to it than this: by privileging a decentering of...

In <i>After Kinship</i> (2004), Janet Carsten employs “substance” to delineate important dimensions of classical understandings of kinship and personhood. She does so by reinterpreting Schneider’s (1980) studies on American kinship and revisiting Marilyn Strathern’s (1988) analyses of Trobriand kinship and in/dividuality. Based on these reinterpretations and, more generally, extensive comparisons between Indian, Melanesian, British, and American cases, Carsten specifically recontextualizes...

Since the General Peace Agreement was signed in 1992 the legal, administrative, and political sectors of Mozambique have undergone multiple reforms that have exposed the complexity of its historical trajectories of law, violence, and authority. From the perspective of those living in the impoverished and frequently dangerous and violent urban and peri-ur-ban <i>bairros,</i> a great variety of agencies and authorities can be approached at times of difficulty or trouble. These range from...

Why does the Mozambican state attempt to control <i>uroi</i> —a force that is seemingly incompatible with the state rationale of both the postindependence Afro-Marxist era as well as the post–civil war period of neoliberal democracy? This chapter will broach this question through untangling the problematic relations between spirit and state within the context of AMETRAMO <i>(Associação da Medicina Tradicional de Moçambique</i> —the Association for Traditional Medicine in Mozambique), a...

This vision of sovereign power hovering above the relations between natural and human elements is relevant beyond genealogical analyses of biopower, pastoral power, and govenmentality. If we go beyond Foucault’s near exclusive context and subject of enquiry, Europe, these relations move to the forefront of social and political life. In Honde, crucial interconnections between polities of chiefly rule and traditional authority, cosmologies of land and the well-being of its inhabitants, and...

What does the notion of territory entail for state formation? As Elden (2013) has made clear in his recent genealogy of territory, it may be seen as a spatial extension of state power. While Elden’s point is crucial, in this chapter I will entertain the idea that the colonial state form is not different in its key dynamics from later state forms, as well as certain African polities, and in this way the chapter challenges the idea of the colonial state as radically different from earlier or...

How is one to make sense of state formation as a predominantly violent process? More concretely, how is one, as an anthropologist, to understand one’s interlocutors’ repeated insistence on life being a sustained period of suffering ( <i>sofrimento</i> )? One point at which to start is with the most recent large-scale period of violence, namely the Mozambican civil war (1976–92). During this phase of violent upheaval, the traditional field was implicated in complex ways and its reality as a...

This article aims to analyse and explain the reasons behind the CSOs’ strong criticism of the ProSavana programme. This will contribute toward: (1) understanding the role of Mozambican CSOs as actors regulating international development cooperation projects; (2) revealing the political and economic interests behind ProSavana, as a first step toward a more critical approach to trilateral cooperation; and (3) illustrating through this case how a partnership between Brazil and “traditional”...

A partir de um modelo de previsões sobre dominância e a dinâmica de recrutamento nos partidos da oposição em sistemas de partido dominante, pretendeu-se perceber as dinâmicas do conflito político em Moçambique que culminaram com o agravamento da tensão militar entre as forças armadas do Governo moçambicano, e o maior partido da oposição, a RENAMO. Pode-se tomar como hipóteses que a assimetria de recursos entre o partido dominante no poder, a FRELIMO, e o maior partido da oposição, bem como...

PARTE I – POLÍTICA Instituições Políticas e Unidade Nacional / Luís de Brito Para Onde Vamos? Dinâmicas de Paz e Conflitos em Moçambique / João C. G. Pereira Democracia e Municipalização em Moçambique: Gradualismo, participação local e serviços básicos / Salvador Forquilha PARTE II – ECONOMIA Inflação e Pobreza – Uma perspectiva macroeconómica / Marc Wuyts Estrutura da Dívida Pública em Moçambique e a sua Relação com as Dinâmicas de Acumulação / Fernanda Massarongo Chivulele Dilemas da...

In the framework of efforts to fight extreme poverty and recognising the importance and need to protect the poor and vulnerable population, in 2007 Mozambique approved Law No. 4/2007 which structured social protection into three levels, including basic social security. In 2010 the first National Basic Social Security Strategy (ENSSB I) was approved for the period 2010–2014, including a set of old (e.g. the Basic Social Security Programme—PSSB) and new (e.g. the Productive Social Action...

A política externa brasileira, a partir de 2003, apresentou uma notória curva em direção ao aprofundamento e à expansão das relações com outros países e regiões “do Sul global”. Nesse contexto, o continente africano ganhou importância para as relações internacionais do Brasil. O objetivo do artigo é avançar na compreensão da participação do setor empresarial na cooperação brasileira em Moçambique. Os resultados demonstram que as empresas e seus projetos privados se mesclam nos territórios....

a Estratégia Nacional de segurança social Básica (ENssB) 2016-2024 visa a materialização do Programa Quinquenal do governo 2015-2019, através da implementação de acções que concorrem para a redução da pobreza e da vulnerabilidade, assegurando que os resultados do crescimento da economia moçambicana beneficiem a todos os cidadãos, sobretudo os que vivem em situação de pobreza e de vulnerabilidade. A elaboração da presente Estratégia teve como base as metas definidas na Estratégia Nacional de...

The promotion of decentralisation and local governance has long since been an established part of bilateral and multilateral development cooperation. In the context of fragile statehood, however, this area of development cooperation is frequently faced with the general suspicion of encouraging separatism, exacerbating conflicts, and thereby promoting the disintegration of the state. At the same time, fragile contexts create demand for institutional solutions concerning the distribution of...

Mozambique is a young African country with a strong growing economy and increasing foreign direct investment. We can observe a rising number of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) projects and activities in the country. Nevertheless there is still no systematic approach or coordination through public authorities or the business sector itself. CSR is mainly motivated by immediate own company needs like training or health of workers. We also find philanthropy projects as well as projects...

Background: In countries, such as Mozambique, where maternal mortality remains high, the greatest contribution of mortality comes from the poor and vulnerable communities, who frequently reside in remote and rural areas with limited access to health care services. This study aimed to understand women’s health care seeking practices during pregnancy, taking into account the underlying social, cultural and structural barriers to accessing timely appropriate care in Maputo and Gaza Provinces,...

Recommendations: 1. On planning and budgeting, greater coordination is recommended between planning (setting priorities) and budgeting (financial apportionment). Transformation of all District Health Services, Women and Social Action (SDSMAS) into Management Beneficiary Units (MBU) is necessary. 2. Stakeholders should bet more on application of national public financial management systems (PFM). The use of parallel financial systems instead of enabling the National Health System (NHS) to be...