The contradictions of empowerment promotion through social engineering. Mozambique’s Peace and the ‘7 million’ Initiative

Abstract

The concept of ‘empowerment’ has been widely used among development practitioners since the early 1990s. This thesis aims to contribute to the literature on empowerment by developing an analytical framework that incorporates: (a) the dialectical nature of power, (b) multiple levels of analysis, and (c) the subjectivities of power that different actors have and that affect the way they respond to policies. The model is applied to the analysis of Mozambique’s transition to peace and the study of a national initiative called District Development Fund, known as the ‘7 Million’, which aims to promote empowerment by reducing poverty and promoting local participation in the rural districts. The analysis focuses, on the one hand, on the ‘7 million’ policy formulation, stressing the power struggles that shaped its final outcome and, on the other hand, the policy implementation in the district of Angoche, where I conducted extensive fieldwork. I argue that, even though the ‘7 million’ had some positive aspects – including providing a discourse that underlines the relevance of the districts and the local community in matters of governance – its effects in promoting local empowerment have been far below its potential. One of the reasons for this is to be found in the dynamics of power-to and power-over that take place at the local level and that partly reflect structural aspects linked to the Mozambique state formation and peacebuilding process. More generally, the case illustrates the limitations and contradictions of policies that aim promoting ‘bottom-up’ empowerment from the ‘top-down’.