Peri-Urban Expansion in the Maputo City Region: Land Access and Middle-Class Advances

Urbanisation in sub-Saharan Africa has been marked by high socio-economic inequality, which continued after independence. The growth of a still ill-defined middle class has introduced new dynamics in urban space in the region, with different effects on lower-income groups, who form the vast majority of city dwellers. Access to urban land is central to these new dynamics and plays an important role in the reduction of pre-existing inequalities. In the Mozambican capital, Maputo, as land becomes increasingly scarce, development expands into the peri-urban areas of a fast-growing city region, partly encouraged by the improvement and construction of main roads but also by official urban planning praxis in a context where land is state-owned. This article analyses the land occupation processes promoted by these state initiatives and how these are shaping expansion in the Maputo city region, with a focus on new occupation by a growing middle class, linked to increasing land value and commodification. It argues that recent state initiatives in urban development have been supportive of middle-class advances into peri-urban areas of the Maputo metropolitan area, with reduced consideration of lower-income groups, on which these advances often have negative effects.