I won’t sugarcoat it: The situation in Mozambique’s northern Cabo Delgado province is dire. Armed conflicts between security forces and the militant Islamic group, Ahlu Sunnah Wa-Jamo (ASWJ), known locally as “al-Shabab” even though it has no connections to the Somali group with that name, have left dozens of people dead and displaced thousands since last fall.
The violence is not new: The insurgents have been mounting brutal attacks within Cabo Delgado since 2017. Some argue that these brutal incidents are a response to poverty and feelings of marginalization among the residents of the province. Others claim ASWJ is motivated by a desire to control the region’s vast natural gas and mineral resources. Government leaders have blamed global jihadism. Any certainly, many of these factors have played a role in the current situation to varying degrees.
For decades, many of Africa’s oil- and gas-producing states followed a predictable pattern. They treated their oil and gas primarily as raw materials that could be sold abroad for a quick profit, rather than as a means of supporting efforts to make more lasting changes in the economy of the nation as a whole.
This pattern has had unfortunate consequences. It discouraged investment in local capacity, and it fostered the development of arrangements under which most residents of the producing states could not see how the large amounts of money earned from oil and gas exports were improving their lives. In other words, it allowed most hydrocarbon revenues to flow back to the home offices of international oil companies (IOCs) or to go to national oil companies (NOCs) that transferred funds to local governments and, in many cases, to individual government officials, along with their friends and family members.