The EconomistAugust 29th 2020 Middle East & Africa 332
1the gas. The rest are undertrained, under-
paid and accused of human-rights abuses,
which could worsen as the government be-
gins to arm local militias. Most soldiers are
not from Cabo Delgado and do not speak
the local languages. Often they flee when
insurgents attack.
So the government has turned to out-
siders. Together they could be a cast of
characters in a novel co-written by Tom
Clancy and Wilbur Smith. First there was
the aborted involvement of Erik Prince,
who founded Blackwater, a controversial
American security firm. Then, in 2019,
came the Wagner Group, Russian merce-
naries close to the Kremlin. It lost battles
and retreated. In its wake came Dyck Advi-
sory Group (dag), a South Africa-based out-
fit led by Lionel Dyck, a former Rhodesian
officer who became a commander in Rob-
ert Mugabe’s Zimbabwean army. Mr Dyck is
admired in frelimocircles for leading an
assault in Zimbabwe on the party’s arch-
enemy, renamo, in 1985. Now dag’s heli-
copters, with machineguns welded to the
side, are trying to stop insurgent attacks.
Will neighbouring countries’ troops
follow the mercenaries? After a (virtual)
meeting of leaders of the Southern African
Development Community on August 17th,
the bloc released a statement saying that it
would “support Mozambique in address-
ing the terrorism and violent attacks”. But
Mozambique is reluctant to let nearby
countries interfere too much. And the
neighbours themselves are wary.
South Africa is said to have sent a small
contingent of special forces to the prov-
ince. This month it appointed Siphiwe
Nyanda, a former chief of the South African
Defence Force, as ambassador to Mozam-
bique. It may adapt its navy’s operations in
the Mozambique channel. Yet many within
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government
are reluctant to get embroiled. Some worry
about possible blowback from isagainst
South Africa.
Zimbabwe’s ruling party, Zanu-pf, is
close to frelimo, but is distracted by its
own imploding economy and infighting.Tanzania has belatedly increased security
along its southern border. On August 12th
the Mozambican government said that
Tanzania had “deactivated” a group of in-
surgents trying to cross into Cabo Delgado.
But for the most part John Magufuli, Tanza-
nia’s president, has behaved as if Cabo Del-
gado is Mr Nyusi’s problem.
Non-African powers are increasingly
worried, especially those with interests in
gas. America has offered to help with mili-
tary training but seems to have been re-
buffed. France is scaling up its presence in
Mozambique and rethinking how it uses
its Indian Ocean islands of Mayotte and
Réunion. Last year Total, a French firm,
bought the stake held by Anadarko, an erst-
while American rival, in a liquefied natural
gas (lng) project in Mozambique. In JulyTotal secured $15bn in loans for its opera-
tions there—the biggest project-finance
deal in African history. On August 24th it
was announced that the firm had finalised
a “joint task-force” with the government to
improve security for its lngoperations.
Mozambique’s strategy, if one can call it
that, is to rely on piecemeal outside help to
fight the insurgency while creating an ar-
mour-plated bubble around its lngassets.
That is a policy of “Iraqification”, says Jas-
mine Opperman of the Armed Conflict Lo-
cation & Event Data Project, a non-profit
organisation. There is no sign that the gov-
ernment is willing or able to tackle the con-
flict’s root causes, such as poverty and cor-
ruption. So a local fight is slowly becoming
international. But the victims remain the
people of Cabo Delgado. 7TANZANIAMOZAMBIQUE
Cabo
DelgadoNampulaNiassaMozambique
Pemba ChannelCOMOROSMocímboa
da PraiaOffshore-gas
exploration
blocks
Maputo150 km
Attacks by jihadist insurgents, 2020*Source: ACLED *To Aug 21stTotal fatalities, by location 10 20 40W
hen the number of irregular mi-
grants crossing into Europe spiked in
2015, policymakers scrambled to stem the
flow. One of the more humane ideas they
latched onto was an old one: to slow migra-
tion by targeting its “root causes”. Growth
and opportunity at home, the thinking
went, would dull people’s enthusiasm to
up sticks. So the European Union set up a
multi-billion-euro trust fund for Africa.
And indeed, irregular migration to Europe,
while still a big issue, has fallen considera-
bly from its peak five years ago.
However, the extra aid probably had lit-
tle to do with that drop. A handful of new
studies suggest that neither aid nor eco-
nomic development in poor countries re-
duces migration.
Start with the work of Paul Clist of the
University of East Anglia and Gabriele Res-
telli of the University of Manchester, who
looked at the relationship between the
number of migrants trying informally to
cross into Italy between 2003 and 2016 and
the amount of aid Italy and others gave to
the migrants’ home countries. They used
statistical regressions to strip out the influ-
ence of other factors, such as conflict. Aid,
they found, does very little to deter irregu-
lar migration—and sometimes does the
opposite. For example, controlling for aid
from elsewhere, Italy could expect to re-
ceive one new asylum-seeker for every
$162,000 it doled out in bilateral aid. To ac-
tually deter a single migrant from a country
like Iraq would cost $1.8m in aid, the au-
thors found. Deterring migrants who comethrough official channels is even costlier,
between $4m and $7m per head.
The notion that as people in poor coun-
tries get richer emigration decreases does
not hold up either, according to Michael
Clemens of the Centre for Global Develop-
ment, a think-tank, and Mariapia Mendola
of the University of Milan Bicocca. They
found that people preparing to emigrate to
rich countries earn, on average, 73% more
than those staying put. The truly poor can-
not afford plane tickets or fees to traffick-
ers. Migration, says Mr Clemens, is like go-
ing to university: it is an investment that
wealthier and better-educated families are
more able and likely to make.
Migration, in fact, goes hand-in-hand
with a country’s development. In another
study Mr Clemens found that as poor coun-Aid and development may even hasten migrationMigrationCheques don’t check treks
Earnings and goings
Estimated emigration rate*, 1960-2019, %
Low- and middle-income countries†*Overseasmigrantsasa percentage
ofhome-countrypopulation
†In 1990 ‡Purchasing-power paritySource:Centrefor
Global Development0510150.4 1 510 5070
GDP per person at 2011 PPP‡, $’000, log scale