South Africa #13
Amid Mozambique’s Spiraling Crisis, What Role Can the U.S. Play?
January 7, 2025
Since its October general election, Mozambique has been experiencing spiraling, deadly political violence. Many Mozambicans, including the leading opposition candidate, saw the victory of the ruling Frelimo party as fraudulent. Frustration with decades of single-party dominance is mounting. Today, some Mozambicans are looking to international help to save their country, one of the poorest in the world, from a possible return to war. Time is of the essence for such diplomatic intervention. Given that few African countries receive as large a U.S. development commitment as Mozambique, the spotlight is on the United States.
For years, Mozambique was not a U.S. priority in Africa — but that has changed. The U.S. Development Finance Corporation and the Export-Import Bank have committed billions of dollars to projects in the southeast African nation. U.S. bilateral aid exceeded $550 million in 2023, among the highest in Africa, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) signed a $537 million compact with Mozambique the same year. In 2022, Mozambique was among the few countries selected to receive focused attention and aid through the Global Fragility Act and the Department of Energy is financially backing a Mozambican lithium mine. Exxon Mobil is looking to finalize a $30 billion natural gas project in Mozambique.
U.S. and other foreign investment materialized after national reconciliation that ended decades of war. Starting two years after its 1975 independence from Portugal, Mozambique suffered decades of war — which took the lives of one million Mozambicans — between the Frelimo government and the rebel Renamo force. The Cold War’s end took steam out of the conflict and a peace agreement facilitated by the Mozambican Church Council, the Rome-based Catholic lay Community of Sant’Egidio and others was struck, followed by a major United Nations peacekeeping operation, with democratic elections being held in 1994. Frelimo candidates have won every presidential election since.
Election integrity under the Frelimo-controlled government has long been compromised. National elections in 2019 were widely viewed as being seriously flawed, as were 2023 local elections. The October 9 election that elected Frelimo presidential candidate Daniel Chapo over Venância Mondlane of the newly emergent Podemos party has brought the strongest criticism. The International Republican Institute’s observation mission said: “The Mozambican election was marred by widespread irregularities, subsequent violence, and fraudulent practices that prevented a credible electoral outcome.” Few believe this election reflected the will of the Mozambican people, who appear increasingly frustrated with Frelimo misgovernance and corruption.
Besides election-sparked violence, Mozambique is suffering from a deadly Islamist insurgency, centered in its northern province of Cabo Delgado, which has displaced nearly a million Mozambicans since 2017. While 2021 military interventions by Southern African Development Community (SADC) and Rwandan troops stopped the worst of the violence, the insurgency is far from over. Government efforts needed to address legitimate local grievances over natural resource extraction and stem jihadist recruiting will be further weakened by the ongoing political crisis. What many considered to be a governance crisis only in the north, where some Frelimo leaders are reportedly profiting from corrupt businesses, should have been addressed as a national problem, with Mozambicans countrywide feeling politically unrepresented and economically marginalized.
Initially focused on condemning the violence while defending peaceful protest, the U.S. recently noted concerns over the Constitutional Council’s December 23 validation of the election, stating that “Civil society organizations, political parties, the media, and international observers, including those from the United States, cited significant irregularities in the tabulation process, as well as concern about the lack of transparency throughout the election period.” While endorsing these concerns of others for now, the U.S. will have to make its own judgments about the election as governance is an element of the MCC compact with Mozambique.
There is one reason for the U.S. to consider an active role in trying to resolve the Mozambican crisis: it has substantial interests, underscored by its Mozambican investments, in not seeing the country return to war, which would bring incalculable human suffering. The U.S. could be more impactful than others in mediation efforts, as its investments provide it leverage over the parties, particularly the government, to stay on a new, more politically and economically inclusive course. The MCC compact, for example, can and should be voided if there aren’t substantial improvements in Mozambican governance. This leverage is more effective the closer the U.S. is to negotiations. Any such effort should respect Mozambican sovereignty and could build on a recent U.S. success in averting an African political crisis in Senegal, where it worked with others to stop its president from changing the constitution to extend his rule.
More:
https://www.usip.org/publications/2025/01/amid-mozambiques-spiraling-crisis-what-role-can-us-play