From basic needs to safety-nets : the rise and fall of urban food-rationing in Mozambique

This study traces the relationship between strategies of development and the organisation of urban food distribution in Maputo, Mozambique. It argues that general price subsidies and rationing promoted social equity in the socialist period and that the targeted cash-transfer scheme instituted with structural adjustment was a token measure motivated by political considerations. The weakness of the income-transfer scheme derives from its imbedding in a strategy of liberalisation that does not adequately confront the complex causes of pervasive poverty in Mozambique. (DÜI/DSE)