The neglect of African education under colonialism

Portuguese colonial education policy provides a context for understanding the features of higher education in contemporary Mozambique. Having established initial contact with Mozambique in 1498, the Portuguese state did not issue a decree establishing public schools until 1845 (Cross Reference Cross1987: 557; Ferreira Reference Ferreira1974: 60). The establishment of the dictatorship under António Salazar in 1930 gave more privileges to Catholic missions to instruct Africans in the colonies, while the state assumed responsibility to educate Europeans, Asians and assimilados (those Africans who had assimilated Portuguese values under the Portuguese policy of assimilation).

Only the advent of armed liberation movements across all of Portugal's African colonies and foreign pressure in the 1960s compelled Portugal to introduce sweeping social and economic reforms. In education, these included increased state funding and, in 1964, compulsory primary education. Subsequently, the number of secondary schools went from six in 1958 to forty-one in 1973 (Pitcher Reference Pitcher1993: 254–7). Increases in enrolments at both primary and secondary levels also occurred. Also, in 1964, the Portuguese colonial administration established the first institution of higher learning in the capital, the Estudos Gerais Universitários de Moçambique (University General Studies of Mozambique),Footnote ¹ which was then renamed the University of Lourenço Marques in 1968.Footnote ² At the time, its main offering was a general programme to train secondary school teachers, with a final component of the degree to be completed in Portugal (Cross Reference Cross1987: 557).

There is insufficient data regarding those white and black Mozambicans who were awarded university degrees before the official opening of Estudos Gerais Universitários in 1964 (Cross Reference Cross1987; Mário et al. Reference Mário, Fry, Levey and Chilundo2003). However, a look at the biographies of several prominent Mozambicans who participated in the liberation struggle or the independent government after 1975 and who obtained university education before 1964 shows that many were educated in Portugal (Joana Simeão, Sérgio Vieira, Pascoal Mocumbi, Mariano Matsinha, Domingos Arouca) and a few in South Africa and the United States (Eduardo Mondlane, Kamba Simango) (Gerdes Reference Gerdes2013). The number of students with a university degree from the only institution of higher learning in Mozambique was very small.

Education after independence

In the euphoria of independence, the new government of Mozambique under the leadership of the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo) adopted a socialist model with ambitious social development programmes. These included a widespread literacy campaign aimed at Mozambicans who had been neglected under colonialism. As Azevedo observes, ‘while the Portuguese education was elitist, capitalist, gradualist, romantic, and theoretical, Frelimo's aimed at being universal, socialist, revolutionary, and extremely practical’ (Reference Azevedo1976: 14). In fact, the government prioritized education as long as it aligned well with Frelimo's Marxist-Leninist agenda. Initially, the government made significant achievements in this regard. Despite the mass exodus of qualified Portuguese personnel, it successfully expanded access to education. The number of enrolled students in all grades rose from just hundreds of thousands in 1975 to over 2 million in 1980. Girls and illiterate adults benefited from free education campaigns, which brought the illiteracy rate down from about 90 per cent in 1970 to 70 per cent in 1980 (AfriMap and OSISA 2012: 32–3).

Driven by revolutionary ideals, President Samora Machel renamed the University of Lourenço Marques the Eduardo Mondlane University on 1 May 1976 in memory of the first president of Frelimo. As the only university in the country, Eduardo Mondlane University was called upon to contribute to the implementation of the socialist project in Mozambique but it did so under quite austere conditions inherited from the colonial period. To respond to the shortage of qualified public employees following the departure of the Portuguese, the university prioritized the training of teachers for secondary schools, thereby reducing opportunities for students to make their own choices about what they wanted to study and for what purpose. As David Hedges, a professor of history at Eduardo Mondlane since 1976, observes, funds for research were limited and the objective of the university was focused more on teaching. As a result, many staff members were redirected to the Faculty of Education to train teachers for secondary education (Azevedo Reference Azevedo1976: 13).

Moreover, the university administration was asked to contribute to the construction of Marxism-Leninism immediately after independence. In this regard, the administration established the Faculty of Marxism-Leninism and introduced the Workers’ and Combatants’ Course. In compliance with the government's revolutionary agenda, university students were expected to do community work. According to Azevedo, ‘1,600 students and professors from the University of Lourenço Marques went to the countryside in July of 1975 to work in collective farms and take part in physical labors and social investigations’ (Azevedo Reference Azevedo1976: 13). Between 1983 and 1989, the government ordered the closure of some faculties, including Law, allegedly due to doubts related to the political views and professional levels of a large number of the faculty (Mário et al. Reference Mário, Fry, Levey and Chilundo2003: 8).Footnote ³ The closing of the Law Faculty shows the extent of the Frelimo party's determination to involve the university in the socialist project despite its potentially negative effect on academic freedom. Nevertheless, Frelimo's socialist policies opened up spaces for people with humble backgrounds to attend university in a country with a long history of discriminatory and racist treatment in education.

Furthermore, financial donations from socialist-oriented countries such as East Germany, Cuba and the Soviet Union combined with funding from the Swedish, the Italians, the Dutch, and several private sources such as the Ford Foundation, led to increased student enrolment in tertiary education (Mário et al. Reference Mário, Fry, Levey and Chilundo2003: 41). According to Narciso Matos, who was one of the first black teaching staff and the first black rector at Eduardo Mondlane University, the Dutch supported fields of study such as agriculture, engineering and water resources by 1978.Footnote ⁴ Meanwhile, the social sciences received funding from the Swedish government while Italians supported architecture and agriculture. Eastern bloc countries such as the Soviet Union and East Germany provided support in kind by deploying teaching staff.

Matos further underlines that the availability of other benefits such as free housing, transportation and communication complemented the lower salaries paid at the university and created a good environment for intellectual production.Footnote ⁵ This statement is corroborated by Hedges, who contends that the shortage of resources affected the life of academic staff but it did not stop institutional development. He observes that, in the 1980s, the East Germans erected the building that currently hosts the Faculty of Education and the Department of Public Administration and Political Science. Furthermore, even as economic conditions worsened during the 1980s, the Pedagogical University was created in 1985,Footnote ⁶ followed by the Institute of International Relations in 1986.Footnote ⁷

Yet Frelimo's ambitious education programme faced many challenges, including the scarcity of financial resources, mismanagement, a civil war that began soon after independence, and the occurrence of cyclical droughts and floods up to 1983 (Robinson Reference Robinson2006: 327; Emerson Reference Emerson2013: 196). The war hampered economic development plans and forced the government to prioritize the military, which received 42 per cent of the national budget by 1986 (Mubai Reference Mubai2015: 105). As the war expanded from its epicentre in central Mozambique to the north and south in the early 1980s, the country was hit by severe droughts that crippled an economy highly dependent on rain-fed agriculture. By 1983, Mozambique was experiencing a profound economic crisis. Like many other African states, Mozambique saw its tax revenues collapse followed by the rapid growth of debt. Some scholars note that the socialist experience resulted in ‘excessive centralization, bureaucratization of economic direction, disorganization and mismanagement of companies and lack of discipline’ (Sidaway and Simon Reference Sidaway and Simon1993: 14). As has been observed, ‘African governments were unable to afford to maintain proper public services, thus schools, universities and hospitals were starved of funds’ (Meredith Reference Meredith2013: 368). Mozambique had similar conditions to these other countries, and, in addition, was fighting a protracted conflict. Thus, even before the adoption of a policy that called for cuts to social programmes, Mozambique was already experiencing a form of austerity.

Structural adjustment policies and educational restructuring

The lack of funds to pay for public services pushed the government of Mozambique to seek assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, but the funds came with conditionalities in the form of substantial economic and political reforms. In 1987, Mozambique adopted a structural adjustment programme (SAP), joining twenty-three other sub-Saharan African countries that had adopted SAPs (Riddell Reference Riddell1992: 56). This economic shift had immediate impacts on education, cutting the budget by half (Mota Reference Mota2016: 26).

Scholars have observed that central elements of SAPs, such as reductions in public spending in order to address budget deficits, produce austerity (Takala Reference Takala1998; Schattock Reference Schattock2010). In the case of Mozambique, however, public spending had already declined drastically. Moreover, since SAPs prescribe privatization and the adoption of market mechanisms to promote growth, the Mozambican government also had to shift its orientation from a state-driven economy to a private sector-driven one (Pitcher Reference Pitcher1998; Reference Pitcher2002). Consequently, in 1990 Mozambique adopted a new constitution paving the way for the establishment of multiparty democracy and liberalization of the economy. With this new political and economic dispensation, the state was forced to cut funds for social development programmes but also to open up space for private intervention in areas that were previously deemed the prerogative of the state (Castel-Branco and Cramer Reference Castel-Branco, Cramer and Addison2003). In the higher education sector, SAPs provoked what Santos called the divestment of public universities (Reference Santos2004).

This corroborates Marshall's argument that, although SAPs helped the economy to recover, they had negative effects on the poor, particularly women and children. As she observes, SAPs forced the state to reduce expenditure on services and salaries. In education, state expenditure was reduced by 48 per cent (Marshall Reference Marshall1990). These cuts aggravated the deterioration of living conditions for Mozambicans. Unlike the late 1970s, when the economy was promising and the state subsidized accommodation and other benefits for employees, the adoption of SAPs saw a decrease and even an end to the welfare state. As one Mozambican scholar recalls, SAPs provoked increases in the prices of basic goods (where they were available) and made it impossible for academics to afford house rentals.Footnote ⁸ These austere consequences increased the dissatisfaction of staff due to low pay and deteriorating working conditions. As a result, by the late 1980s, teaching staff from primary to tertiary education institutions went on strike in response to the drop in salaries (Oppenheimer Reference Oppenheimer1993: 198). The government responded to these strikes with brutal violence, forcing the teachers’ union to call off the strike without satisfying the demands of the teachers.

Liberalization, austerity and higher education in Mozambique

Ironically, SAPs would bring two disparate outcomes: hardship owing to the loss of state financing, but also an expansion of the education sector due to liberalization. The liberalization of the economy created space for the establishment of private education institutions by 1993,Footnote ⁹ as Table 1 shows. The first private institutions approved were the Higher Polytechnic and University Institute (ISPU)Footnote ¹⁰ and the Catholic University of Mozambique,Footnote ¹¹ followed by the Higher Institute of Sciences and Technology of Mozambique (ISCTEM) in 1996.Footnote ¹²

Table 1

Sample of tertiary education institutions in Mozambique, 1995–2015

Source: Adapted from Langa et al. (Reference Langa, Cumaio and Rafael2014).

Table 1 shows that the business of higher education in Mozambique attracted people from different backgrounds and with different interests, including professors, politicians, businesspeople and religious institutions. A close look at the statutes of the majority of private institutions shows that, except for the ones founded by religious institutions, it is difficult to trace the personalities behind their creation. Overall, these institutions are registered as owned by associations, investment funds and anonymous societies. The lack of transparency in the ownership of private institutions prevents the public from knowing the social or political connections of the owners, thus making it difficult to hold these institutions to account. Moreover, many private institutions are linked to influential ruling party members, which raises serious questions of transparency regarding the use of taxpayers’ money. For example, budget cuts reduced the number of scholarships offered to low-income students in public universities, but economic liberalization made it possible for students in private institutions to compete for state scholarships. Data provided by a senior officer at the Institute of Scholarships at the Ministry of Education show that students at Nachingweia University, a university owned by the Frelimo party, are among the major beneficiaries of state scholarships.

It is also noteworthy that the universities owned by religious organizations claim to be non-profit organizations, but some charge monthly fees higher than those charged in openly profit-oriented institutions. For example, monthly fees for students enrolled on courses leading to a bachelor's degree are US$80 at Dom Bosco Higher Institute, run by the Catholic Church, but US$75 at the Higher Institute of Management, Commerce and Finance (ISGECOF). Thus, private institutions of higher education represent a complex picture in which political, religious and civil society organizations and the business sector battle for profit. In some cases, this competition involves collusion with state agents who divert state resources to sponsor students in private universities at a higher price and overlook irregularities in the functioning of private institutions. The Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education has threatened to close private institutions that do not comply with minimum requirements to operate but it has rarely enforced the law. For example, it took two years to act against irregularities detected in eleven institutions in 2017 (Chilingue Reference Chilingue2019).

The boom in private institutions of higher education is not reflected in the diversity of areas of study. While the government defines agriculture and engineering as priorities, the majority of private universities offer courses in business and law. Data compiled by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education show that arts and humanities attracted the lowest number of students (2.8 per cent); in comparison, social sciences, business and law studies attracted 45.7 per cent of enrolments in 2015. Despite the government claim that agriculture is the base for Mozambique's economic development, only 1.9 per cent of enrolments in 2015 were in this area. Overall, natural sciences, agriculture, engineering and health sciences attracted only 23.5 per cent of enrolments in that year (MCTESTP 2015: 40). This trend suggests that private institutions are loath to invest in high-tech laboratories and other engineering equipment. It also shows that, overall, private institutions of higher education cater to elites comprised mainly of higher middle-income families based in urban areas. Having been born and raised in urban areas, these students do not seem to be inclined to enrol in programmes such as agricultural sciences, which would take them away from their social milieu.

The lack of investment in education in the natural sciences has implications for the rest of the national economy. For example, with the discovery of large deposits of natural gas estimated at over 150 trillion cubic feet in Cabo Delgado, northern Mozambique (Hanlon Reference Hanlon2013), the country is experiencing a general shortage of skilled labour, especially in the mining, energy and chemicals industries, resulting in a very high dependency on foreign labour (Anjo et al. Reference Anjo, Amaro and Martins2017). Moreover, the lack of resources such as laboratories and other equipment for the few science and technology courses means that students are not adequately prepared for the job market. This happens because the education system ‘lacks practical and laboratory teaching – as neither public sector nor private companies invest enough in courses that need expensive labs’ (Anjo et al. Reference Anjo, Amaro and Martins2017: 103). This ends up jeopardizing the government's commitment to include local people and enterprises in the gas industry. In the medium and long term, it may also create resentment against foreign investment. In fact, recent studies have argued that the current military insurgency in Cabo Delgado is fuelled by local resentment at being socially and economically excluded (Morier-Genoud Reference Morier-Genoud2020; Rogeiro Reference Rogeiro2020).

The unintended consequences of austerity and the liberalization of higher education

Considering that the history of Mozambique in the last fifty years has been characterized by a scarcity of resources in the provision of social services, it is ironic that tertiary educational institutions have boomed following economic liberalization. This section analyses the broader trends and various rationales of liberalizing higher education in Mozambique. It pays attention to strategies adopted by Mozambican universities to deal with limited state support and donor conditionalities, and argues for a balanced approach that acknowledges the lack of funds for research and capacity building while appreciating the agency of university staff and the contribution of private universities to the expansion of enrolments and intellectual freedom.

The liberalization of higher education in Mozambique compelled academics to reinvent themselves to cope with the effects of austerity measures. With their salaries devalued by periodic inflation and institutions underfunded, Mozambican academics looked for supplementary income. In this pursuit, they followed a broader, Africa-wide pattern of response to austerity (Mamdani Reference Mamdani2009). Mozambican institutions cut their operating budgets and expenditures, avoided capital investment, solicited external non-governmental funding, increased tuition fees, increased class size, and offered more courses such as credit courses and certificate programmes linked to continuing education (Kwong Reference Kwong1993: 66–8). To supplement their income, faculty members engaged in consultancy jobs commissioned by the explosion of NGOs, which increasingly began to take on roles previously undertaken by the state, such as service provision and development projects (Cruz e Silva Reference Cruz e Silva2010: 218).

According to Luis de Brito, because of the diverse nature of consultancy jobs, the academics involved in these activities lost their research focus. He explains that, in search of supplementary income, academics became ‘specialists in everything’; as a result, they neglected their areas of specialization.Footnote ¹³ Because academic research requires a long-term focus in a particular discipline and a specific thematic area, consultancy jeopardized academic production in Mozambique. One study concluded that nearly 68 per cent of academic staff with doctoral degrees in Mozambique stated that they were involved in more than one income-generating activity (Fellesson and Mählck Reference Fellesson and Mählck2013: 53).

A second aspect of the decline in support for higher education was the growing number of promising researchers who left universities to join NGOs and politics. Among those who kept their jobs in the university, a quick survey of their academic publications in peer-reviewed journals reveals little production. Since the 1990s, most publications by Mozambicans with doctoral degrees comprise ‘papers for seminars and conferences, teaching materials, reports to government agencies, and university reports. Peer-reviewed books and articles in national and international journals have been produced to a significantly lesser extent (below 10 per cent in all fields)’ (Fellesson and Mählck Reference Fellesson and Mählck2013: 60–1).

Third, as mentioned above, liberalization created space for the introduction of private institutions of higher education. Yet, these institutions poached teaching and administrative staff from public institutions, in particular the primary public institution of higher learning in the country, Eduardo Mondlane University (Mário et al. Reference Mário, Fry, Levey and Chilundo2003: 41). Data compiled by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Higher and Technical Vocational Education show that out of a total of twenty-six private institutions surveyed, only sixty-six faculty members with doctorates hold full-time positions compared with 105 working on contracts (MCTESTP 2015: 13). The part-time faculty are called ‘turbo professors’, a reference to how they spend their days commuting from one institution to another. In practice, some ‘turbo professors’ who teach day and evening classes are the same ones who also teach in private institutions, which implies an extremely heavy workload. Considering that these professors have social responsibilities including parenting, catering for extended family members and attending functions and funerals, it becomes much harder for them to find time to properly prepare lectures.Footnote ¹⁴

Additionally, the ‘turbo’ phenomenon is not exclusive to higher education; it occurs in primary, secondary and technical schools, public administration and the health sector. Ferrinho and Omar (Reference Ferrinho and Omar2006) revealed that health professionals, including medical staff, worked in projects internationally funded by NGOs but also worked in the private for-profit sector, took a second job in the public sector, or found additional employment completely outside the medical field. They observed that under-the-desk charging and pilfering were very common among health professionals. In 2018, a weekly magazine reported that ‘turbo medical doctors’ were accelerating the diseases of patients by delaying medical appointments (Pila Reference Pila2018).

Like other public employees, ‘turbo professors’ have exclusive contracts with public institutions, but they spend a great part of their daily working hours outside their home institution. This reality prompted the common saying that ‘the university or other public institutions pretend to pay decent salaries to their employees while they pretend to be working’. Despite complaints by students, parents and the general public about the lack of total commitment to public service by teaching staff, the state has been reluctant to take radical measures to curtail the ‘turbo professor’ phenomenon. Instead, it has promoted the creation of more privately owned higher education institutions, many of which neglect scholarly research. As a rector of one of the major private universities observed, ‘Private universities are not focused on research, they do not invest in postgraduate studies and lack proper facilities and qualified full-time staff to conduct research.’Footnote ¹⁵

Fourth, as in Uganda, public universities in Mozambique have begun shifting to income-generating commercial activities to survive. Whereas Mamdani has described this scenario in the Ugandan context as ‘privatization in higher education’ (Mamdani Reference Mamdani2009: 15), in Mozambique, Langa labelled it ‘marketization’ (Reference Langa2012). In Mozambique, many university staff have coped with austerity measures within public universities by introducing evening classes directed to those who can afford to pay tuition fees (ibid.). Nevertheless, unlike Uganda, where the introduction of paid evening courses began with professional schools and technical faculties (Mamdani Reference Mamdani2009: 28), in Mozambique the process included arts and humanities from the outset. Moreover, postgraduate studies were also offered in the evening following the marketization model. This move resulted in an exponential increase in enrolments. For example, in 2008, the number of students in paid evening courses at the Pedagogic University represented 66.7 per cent of enrolments (Langa Reference Langa2012: 31). As happened in Uganda, the introduction of evening classes initially aimed to retain teaching staff by providing them with supplementary income (Dias Reference Dias2012). Currently, evening undergraduate courses in public universities charge the equivalent of US$42 to US$83 per month while private universities charge a monthly fee ranging from US$91 to US$250. In the Mozambican context, where someone with a high school diploma can expect to receive a salary of only approximately US$120, private universities are unaffordable for the majority of citizens.

Given that the majority of Mozambicans cannot afford the fees in private institutions, the opening of evening courses in public institutions at relatively low tuition fees broadened access to higher education but had unintended consequences. Evening courses attracted thousands of public employees and youth working in the informal sector who could not afford the fees charged by private institutions. As a lecturer at a public university since 2000, I have had to deal with students who, because they live thirty kilometres away from the university campus, have to wake up at 4 a.m. to queue for transport to work. These students arrive at their workplace at 7 a.m. They start work at 7.30 a.m. only to finish at 3.30 p.m. if they are public employees or 5 p.m. if they work in the private sector. They then look for transport to university, where they often arrive late to attend classes beginning at 5 p.m. and ending at just before 11 p.m. After classes, these students battle for transport to go back home where they generally arrive at midnight! Before sleeping they must prepare dinner and read assigned materials and cater for spouses, children and other relatives. Realistically, this routine leaves them with less than four hours to rest and recover for the next daily journey. This routine has affected the level of participation and learning of my students, who often fail to read materials and fall asleep in class.

The few students who graduate provoke unintended consequences for employers, particularly the state. The unexpected graduation of students who had lower-paying jobs in public administration initially caught the government unprepared to deal with their demands to move to higher levels of the administration and to have access to increased pay. The government responded by freezing promotions and then creating new regulations for career progression. Moreover, the government started to limit the recruitment of people with higher education to public service, particularly education. Consequently, for the first time since independence in 1975, many qualified teachers with bachelor's degrees are unemployed in a country with a deficit of 14,000 teachers in the 2018 school year (Matias Reference Matias2018). In a contracting economy, the political and social implications of these government policies on qualified people have yet to be assessed.

Finally, together with the introduction of private universities, liberalization contributed to the birth of privately owned research institutes. The Institute for Economic and Social Studies (Instituto de Estudos Socias e Económicos or IESE), Women and Law in Southern Africa Research and Education Trust (WLSA) and Centre for Social Studies Aquino de Bragança are just three of the institutes that have appeared in the last two decades. According to one of the co-founders of IESE, the initiative to create a private research institute was a response to austerity and economic liberalization. He explains that the idea of creating a research institute had the aim of attracting research funding that could easily be accessed and also paying the salaries of researchers, an aspect not covered by public institutions. It is interesting to observe that the argument behind the establishment of private research institutes resonates with what happened in Uganda with the formation of the Centre for Basic Research (CBR) in 1991 (Mamdani Reference Mamdani2009: x). In Mozambique, access to research funds in public universities has been marred by a high degree of centralization and bureaucracy, making it difficult to access the funds and conduct research. As Mário et al. observe, ‘the prevailing management model was characterized by excessive centralization of resources and decision making’ (Reference Mário, Fry, Levey and Chilundo2003: 99). To make things worse, university research funds do not cover salaries or stipends, making them unattractive to researchers who are struggling to make ends meet.

Whereas the establishment of privately owned research institutions provided an opportunity to access research funds and obtain a salary, the dependence on external funding made researchers directly accountable to donor-influenced research topics and shaped the relationship between these institutions and the government. Cruz e Silva observes that dependence on external funding makes Mozambican researchers hostage to the research agendas of donors, thus affecting intellectual freedom (Cruz e Silva Reference Cruz e Silva2010: 217). Here it is important to observe that research sponsors may not dictate the outcome of a particular research project but compliance with pre-selected themes is one of the conditions to access the funds.

Research grants provide some intellectual freedom from government censorship but they also bring challenges to researchers: the need to comply with donors’ research agendas while avoiding being accused of political interference by the national government. For example, when IESE engaged in research that questioned the contracts signed with multinational corporations involved in the exploitation of gas and other natural resources, it collided with the state, which later accused it of colluding with external forces to undermine government achievements. As Matos observed, ‘privately owned research institutions dared to challenge the ruling elites by addressing topics of national interest such as the tax exemptions to international corporations operating in the mining sector’.Footnote ¹⁶ Unlike researchers based in public institutions, those based in private institutions have better access to resources and are able to devote their time solely to research. Moreover, they enjoy a certain degree of free thinking that allows them to question some state policies, resulting in conflict. A good example of these paradoxical effects of liberalization is the court case against Carlos Nuno Castel Branco, a senior economist accused and brought to trial for allegedly offending and defaming the former president Armando Guebuza (Ribeiro Reference Ribeiro2015).

Although not necessarily academic research institutions, the Centre for Public Integrity (Centro de Integridade Pública or CIP), the Centre for Democratic Development (Centro de Desenvolvimento de Democracia or CDC) and the Rural Observatory (Observatório do Meio Rural or OMR) were created by university professors and conduct academic and consultancy research to provide informed criticism of government policies. In fact, these civil society organizations have been active in denouncing corruption scandals, lack of transparency in the extractive industry and mismanagement of electoral processes. Due to their activism, these organizations have suffered a strong backlash from people connected to the ruling elites, who accuse them of being anti-patriotic and of serving foreign interests (Menete Reference Menete2020). On 9 October 2020, Adriano Nuvunga, a professor of political science at Eduardo Mondlane University and director of CDC, received death threats due to his tenacious fight against corruption.Footnote ¹⁷ It goes without saying that private sponsorship for research comes with strings attached, but it gives researchers the freedom to criticize the ruling elites who happen to dominate intellectual thinking by controlling state funds to higher education. Thus, the success of IESE, CIP, CDC and OMR might be associated with the fact that they focus on analysing Mozambique's political economy, which is of great interest to donors.Footnote ¹⁸ Conversely, the failure of the Centre for Social Studies Aquino de Bragança might be explained by its focus on the social sciences, the arts and the humanities, but more research is needed to sustain these claims.