Mozambique - Economic sectors

Like most African countries, the economy of Mozambique was decisively shaped in the colonial period. As Allen Isaacman—author of Cotton is the Mother of Poverty: Peasants, Work, and Rural Struggle in Colonial Mozambique, 1938-1961 —states, the Portuguese

relationship with Mozambique was determined by its need for a large labor force to produce raw materials. Consequently, Portuguese colonial policies coerced peasants into exporting agricultural products to the mother country, while preventing them from developing their own forms of manufacturing and industry. Today, the Mozambican economy remains structurally locked into the position of agricultural exporter, with the manufacturing sector holding a limited, albeit increasingly important, economic role. With increased urbanization, the service sector has become the most important contributor to GDP, though the vast majority of Mozambicans continue to labor in the agricultural sector of the economy.