Mozambique's 3 rd civil war is now in its 5th year in Cabo Delgado province, in the northeast of the country. More than 4300 people have died and nearly one million people have been displaced, more than one third the population of the province. One of the largest investment projects in Africa...

At the end of the Cold War the west imposed economic "shock therapy" on the countries of the former Soviet Union to rapidly turn the communists into capitalists, creating oligarchs. One of the few Africa countries where shock therapy was imposed was Mozambique. Shock therapy was intended to push...

Mozambique has been seen by donors as a success story of peace, stability and growth since the end of its devastating war in 1992. Indeed, it has become increasingly important to the international community as one of the few successes in Africa. Donors have invested a substantial amount of...

Mozambique is a significant heroin transit centre and the trade has increased to 40 tonnes or more per year, making it a major export which contributes up to $100 mn per year to the local economy. For 25 years the trade has been controlled by a few local trading families and tightly regulated by...

What makes elites developmental instead of predatory? We argue that Mozambique's elite was developmental at independence 35 years ago. With pressure and encouragement from international forces, it became predatory. It has now partly returned to its developmental roots and is trying to use the...

‘In a very real sense, the conditions that spawned the war and inflicted gruesome casualties on Sierra Leone’s citizens have not disappeared’, warned the International Crisis Group. In this paper we argue that many of those conditions are being recreated. The same old men who were...