Neoliberal Agrarian Policies and Terms of Incorporation in Rural Mozambique

The current scramble for resources in Africa has become a major driver of social exclusion and ensuing negative implications for rural livelihoods, albeit in differentiated ways. Pre-existing structures and inequalities that resulted from historical colonial paths and specific economic, traditional and legal contexts conditioned the heterogeneity of rural populations; and, consequently, how differently they experience and react to current processes of land grabbing. This chapter aims to understand the differentiated outcomes, implications and reactions of each segment of the rural population in the context of Mozambique specifically, building on Shivji’s concept of the working people. Presently, most large-scale investments in rural areas in Mozambique involve ways of integrating the affected smallholders into the dynamics of rural development. A critical examination of such policies and approaches is presented by looking particularly at processes of smallholder integration, as materialised through corporate social development plans. This entails analysing the terms of incorporation of the different segments of the rural population, including wage workers, poorer peasants, women and local elites. Empirical findings show that most of the smallholders end up adversely incorporated into investment-led rural development projects, ultimately resulting in the inclusion of the few and the exclusion of the majority.