ABSTRACT
The context for Mozambique's development in the 1990s was one of low development indicators exacerbated by a violent struggle for independence in the 1960s and 1970s, followed by a protracted civil war fuelled by Cold War interests. Nearly a decade of moves to central planning and collectivisation of agriculture have been replaced by a gradual liberalisation, which has been carried out first while the war continued and then as the people attempted to rebuild their country. Throughout this period Mozambique has had extraordinarily high aid inflows, amounting at times to close to 100 per cent of GNP. Recent research (e.g. Burnside and Dollar, 1997; Lensink and White, 2001) suggests that such high levels of aid are actually detrimental to a country's growth. 1 Hence, as a report on Swedish aid to Mozambique in the mid-1990s stated: ‘it may well be that the marginal return to assistance is negative’ (Gustafsson, 1996: 11).
