SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This article seeks to explain the revival of the Mozambican cashew processing industry after it was virtually wiped out by liberalisation policies at the turn of the millennium. Over the last decade state, private and external actors have cooperated to rehabilitate cashew processing with a concerted industrial policy and rents generated by protection. It is argued that such rent creation is a political process and that theories of ‘good governance’ and ‘developmental neopatrimonialism’ are unable to explain political support to the cashew sector in Mozambique. The ‘developmental state’ literature is a more useful guide not only to how the industry was rehabilitated, but also to where the political ‘will to develop’ originated in other contexts. Following from this discussion, it is argued that in Mozambique an elite ideology of nationalism, modernisation and anti-imperialism paved the way for protection of the cashew industry, while more active support was a result of more immediate concerns around finely balanced elections, inadequate employment generation in the broader economy and the faltering legitimacy of the ruling party.