Transformations of Rural Spaces in Mozambique

Cecilia Navarra has been a Research Fellow at the European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises (EURICSE, Trento, Italy), at the Department of Economics of the University of Turin, and then a Post-doc Fellow at the Centre of Research in the Economics of Development (CRED) at University of Namur (Belgium). She has also been a Senior Researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala, Sweden. Cristina Udelsmann Rodrigues is a Senior Researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute, Sweden, focussing on urban transformation, youth, rural-urban migration, urban strategies, borders, mining, and local development. The geographical areas of her work are the lusophone African countries – Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe – where she has been conducting research for over 15 years.

• Introduction1. Associations and Civil Society in Rural Mozambique2. Extractive Activities and their Impact on Rural Livelihoods and Local Economies3. Agriculture and Smallholder Production4. Agriculture and Land Acquisitions5. Relations Between the State and Rural Communities6. The Environment, Urbanization and Use of Natural Resources in the Economy

The main issue in today's Mozambique is not gas but land and family farming. This is one of the strengths of this book: it is not only about agriculture, but the multisectoral and multidisciplinary analysis it delivers revolves entirely around the agricultural issue and, from a social point of view, the peasant issue. The book has a rich mix of Mozambican and non-Mozambican authors, both academic and NGO experts; and really does produce knowledge and will be useful even to people who think they know Mozambique well.