Chapter 2 is situated in the context of Portugal’s internal conflicts with its colonies. In 1787, a group of so-called Brahmin priests who attributed racism to their lack of clerical promotions planned a revolt against Portuguese authority in Goa. In the Kingdom of Kongo, a rebellion in 1788 by the smaller Kingdom of Musulu spread into Portuguese slave-trading territories in Angola, initiating a war between Portugal and Musulu. Finally, a conspiracy in 1789 to end Portuguese rule in Minas Gerais, Brazil included slaveholders with outstanding debts who were in jeopardy of losing their property, including the people they enslaved. Two things stand out from placing these events together. First, we see more acutely how slavery and the slave trade not only supported the entirety of the Portuguese empire but also constituted its very framework. Second, and relatedly, the 1798 conspiracy in Bahia may have been more explicitly about race and slavery than these other three episodes. But it is, in fact, race and slavery that tied them together, a claim which orients the reader towards thinking about the Tailors’ conspiracy as part of an empire-wide phenomenon in the remaining chapters.

This chapter explores the links between Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3 (specifically targets 3.3, 3.8, and 3.b, which address the need to fight communicable diseases, achieve universal health coverage, and invest in research and development of vaccines and medicines, respectively) and SDG 9, which calls for the development of industry, innovation, and infrastructure in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). By discussing two case studies, i.e., Brazil’s technology transfer strategy for the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine through a public–private partnership and the implementation of the Mozambican Pharmaceutical Ltd., a Brazil-Mozambique South-South cooperation (SSC) project, it argues that initiatives such as technology transfer and local production of pharmaceuticals in LMICs can be a means to promote industrial and innovation goals while meeting health needs. With significant variations between them, the two case studies illustrate the dynamic interaction between SDG 3 and SDG 9, helping to elucidate the co-benefits between health policy and measures to promote scientific and technological development. The chapter calls for further research to better understand which channels, governance arrangements, and mechanisms can promote effective coordination between healthcare and industrial development.

With economic reforms in the 1980s, the opening up of political space and the end of war in the early 1990s, Mozambique embarked on a decentralisation process. As in other sub-Saharan Africa countries, the impact of the decentralisation reforms on local development and the strengthening of democracy has been modest. How can this be explained? This chapter addresses this question analysing how institutional dynamics shaped their results. The main argument is that the nature of the political system shaped reform results, in the context of institutional dynamics. Of these, those linked to state capacity and independence from private interests, stand out. Reforms are implemented according to group interests, particularly political parties’ interests, which capture the state and use them for maintaining and bolstering political power. Rather than being a means of improving the provision of public goods and strengthening democracy, decentralisation reinforces state control and panders the elite. Probably the biggest challenge facing decentralisation, this makes it a fundamental issue in any reform, within the context of strengthening democracy and promoting local development.

The rule of law and judicial independence are a project yet to be achieved in Mozambique. The different attempts made so far to reform the legal system, mainly after the change in political and strategic direction brought about by the Constitution of 1990, were always short-sighted and conjunctural in nature, under domestic and foreign pressure that was not always clear or well-intentioned. Real structural reforms need to be made for the judiciary to be able to affirm itself as a real power and, in this way, favour balanced growth of companies, increased productivity, investment and jobs and, at the same time, the defence of the rights and legitimate interests of individuals and groups with fewer economic resources.

In light of Mozambique’s natural resources boom—especially its large-scale investments in mining, oil, and gas—this chapter analyses the prospects for the extractive industries to contribute to economic transformation from an institutional perspective. For this purpose, we address the institutional dynamics of the resources sector and consider the underlying causes of the identified outcomes, and we discuss the National Development Strategy, as the instrument outlining the vision for economic transformation and diversification. The chapter is based on a desk review—documental and bibliographic—and on primary data gathered by the authors as part of their research into the field of natural resources and the political economy of development. We conclude that, given Mozambique’s political patronage and clientelism, intra-ruling elite competition, limited productive base, weak state capacity, high level of poverty, and recurrent fiscal deficits, the prospects of the current resource boom leading to economic transformation, despite its considerable potential, are at best uncertain.

The central aim of this chapter is to analyse the impact institutions have on the performance of the health sector in Mozambique. The chapter demonstrates that institutions play a central role among the social determinants of health – and, through it, on economic and social development – particularly for the poorer and more vulnerable, such as children, women, the disabled, and the elderly. It is also argued that the deficiencies and inefficiencies of the operation of the health sector are largely the result of the fact that institutions with influence on the health sector are controlled by a minority of privileged people, who do not give the appropriate priority to the basic health needs of the majority of the population. Finally, it is argued that the most important measures for improving the state of health of Mozambicans are the revision of the Constitution of the Republic, and the strengthening of the National Health System (particularly the National Health Service) alongside the social contract, reducing poverty and economic and social inequality.

At independence in 1975, the Frelimo government took over public administration and started transforming it. The public financial management (PFM) system was adapted to central planning and management of the economy in line with nationalist and Marxist-Leninist thinking. While collapse followed in the mid-1980s, the PFM system was gradually and systematically reformed towards more transparent and efficient mechanisms, and successful reforms did coincide with high growth rates for more than 20 years, after 1993. As the nationalist agenda became more forceful from around 2005–10, when the natural gas reserves in the Rovuma Basin were confirmed, natural resources became the main focus as a source of revenue — severe cracks in the PFM system started to emerge. The ‘hidden debt’ scandal in 2013–14, renewed conflict between Frelimo and Renamo from 2013, and the insurgency war in Cabo Delgado from 2017 put the PFM system under pressure and performance suffered accordingly. The chapter demonstrates how difficult it is to make institutional reforms work, within a structure of political and economic power that may not benefit from them, even in a context of a high degree of aid dependence.

This chapter summarises the institutional diagnostic studies in Benin and Mozambique. Benin’s past development performances are modest. A cotton exporter, its activity fluctuated widely due to a continuously changing organisation of the sector. Illegal cross-border trade with neighbouring Nigeria is another major activity. It generates income, but has limited domestic economic impact while raising informality and corruption. The oligarchs who run the two sectors had practically captured the state, pre-empting alternative development strategies. The situation may now have changed with one of them becoming president. Mozambique entered a civil war shortly after gaining independence. When peace was back, in 1992, development was triggered by the recovery from the war period, and the transition to a modern market economy monitored by Western donors. The country has now started exploiting its abundant natural resources (coal, oil, and huge gas fields). This strategy revealed a highly corrupt institutional setting and the neglect of the great mass of population in rural and often isolated areas, despite clear potential comparative advantages in agriculture.

Volume 1 of The Cambridge History of Global Migrations documents the lives and experiences of everyday people through the lens of human movement and mobility from 1400 to 1800. Focusing on the most important typologies of preindustrial global migrations, this volume reveals how these movements transformed global paths of mobility, the impacts of which we still see in societies today. Case studies include those that arose from the demand for free, forced, and unfree labor, long- and short-distance trade, rural/urban displacement, religious mobility, and the rise of the number of refugees worldwide. With thirty chapters from leading experts in the field, this authoritative volume is an essential and detailed study of how migration shaped the nature of global human interactions before the age of modern globalization.