The elusive plantation: imagining development in Mozambique

Contributor(s): Professor Catherine Boone, Professor Wendy Wolford | For over 100 years, plantations have served as the imagined ideal for agricultural production and labor management in Mozambique. This talk outlines the colonial roots of this desire for the always-elusive plantation and argue that it manifests in contemporary Mozambique in a variety of ways: the global market takes priority over local needs; agricultural researchers rely on external funding that is short-term, motivated by international interests and the search for new varieties rather than land management; and local residents long seen only as plantation labor are separated into ‘emerging’ and ‘poor’ farmers, with research aimed at the former and charity at the latter.