By Randi Kaarhus

Agricultural growth corridors have over the last years been launched as high-profile initiatives to increase agricultural production in Africa. These ‘corridors’ are presented as value-chain mechanisms, and as means to promote an African Green Revolution. As a model for agricultural development, the corridors can also be analysed in the context of shifting international policy discourses, where public-private partnerships (PPP) for development at present are gaining considerable influence. My claim here is that these PPP bring up important questions of accountability. Who is accountable if and when public-private partnerships to promote investments in agriculture get bogged down? Who is accountable if and when PPP drive processes which end up marginalising local people’s rights and interests in land? Who is accountable for what, and to whom?

The paper discusses some elements in the plans and processes aimed at establishing an agricultural growth corridor in Central Mozambique.1 The Beira Agricultural Growth Corridor (BAGC) has so far involved agricultural land that also historically was used for larger-scale commercial production. It is land that was alienated from local people at an earlier stage. Now, from a local smallholders’ perspective, there is concern that an initiative such as BAGC will involve further risks of marginalisation from the best agricultural land; while others see it as embodying new opportunities. With the Mozambican Land Law of 1997, rural people have in principle secure land-use rights. But these rights need to be affirmed and realized in local contexts of political negotiation and unequal access to economic resources.