{
  "url": "https://stakesproject.org/cases/mozambique/",
  "language": "en",
  "type": "case",
  "title": "Mozambique: Liquefied natural gas",
  "description": "The clearest case in the study of what an unmet corporate promise costs the people who believed it, and of how a company manages the fallout when its presence becomes part of the conflict.",
  "updated": "2026-08-02",
  "project": {
    "name": "STAKES",
    "grant": "353416",
    "funder": "Research Council of Norway",
    "funder_id": "https://doi.org/10.13039/501100005416",
    "host": "Centre for Global Sustainability (GLOBE/SUM), University of Oslo",
    "term": "2025-07-01/2029-06-29"
  },
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "alternates": {
    "en": "https://stakesproject.org/cases/mozambique/",
    "no": "https://stakesproject.org/no/cases/mozambique/",
    "es": "https://stakesproject.org/es/cases/mozambique/"
  },
  "slug": "mozambique",
  "country": "Mozambique",
  "sector": "Liquefied natural gas",
  "places": "Cabo Delgado · Palma · Maputo",
  "lead": "Sarah Cechvala",
  "work_package": "WP2",
  "research_questions": [
    4,
    5,
    7
  ],
  "phase": "Fieldwork 2027",
  "headline": "A twenty billion dollar gas project promised jobs to Cabo Delgado. The insurgency arrived first.",
  "summary": "The clearest case in the study of what an unmet corporate promise costs the people who believed it, and of how a company manages the fallout when its presence becomes part of the conflict.",
  "sections": {
    "ground": "Cabo Delgado is Mozambique's poorest and northernmost province, and it sits on top of one of the largest gas discoveries of the century. An insurgency began there in October 2017 and escalated over the following years. In March 2021 an attack on the town of Palma killed civilians and contractors, and the onshore project was suspended shortly afterwards. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced.",
    "corporate_question": "A French energy multinational operates the onshore liquefied natural gas development. Its equity stake is a minority one. The project was sold locally on employment, economic growth and reduced inequality. Whether that promise was ever deliverable at the scale it was communicated is one of the questions here. Whether its non-delivery fed the insurgency is a second and much harder one.",
    "what_we_ask": "We ask what people in Palma and the surrounding districts were told, by whom, and what they did on the strength of it. We ask the company what its own internal expectation was. And we ask what a firm owes people whose expectations it raised, once the project stops."
  },
  "image": {
    "file": "assets/img/mozambique.jpg",
    "alt": "A green road sign in Palma, Cabo Delgado, pointing to Praia de Palma, Namoto and Quionga.",
    "caption": "A road sign in Palma, Cabo Delgado, 2020, pointing to Namoto and Quionga. The town was attacked the following March.",
    "author": "Voice of America / VOA",
    "licence": "Public domain",
    "source": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Palma,_Cabo_Delgado,_Mo%C3%A7ambique_VOA.jpg",
    "retrieved": "2026-08-02"
  },
  "company_named": false,
  "naming_policy": "The case company is named once a peer-reviewed output naming it is published.",
  "reading": []
}