Agrarian Change in Northern Mozambique: A ‘New’ Dimension of Research in Light of the Conflict and Violence in Cabo Delgado?

In light of this research context and the different hypotheses that have been put forward, particularly those attributing the conflict to the dynamics of po-verty, social marginalization and the resource extrac-tion dynamics, an argument for a ‘new’ dimension of research in light of the conflict in Cabo Delgado is made. A wide range of information and analysis has been produced, but systematic analysis of broader processes of agrarian change in light of the conflict in Cabo Delgado and their dynamics of change in the northern Mozambique is still scarce, despite referen-ces on the relevance of this being made2. This paper intends to draw attention to the need to understand the political economy of agrarian change in the regi-on. This implies, to use Bernstein's (2010, 1) words, investigating ‘the social relations and dynamics of production and reproduction, of property and power in rural/agrarian societies [in the region] and their historical and contemporary processes of change’.