Blocking Human Potential: How Formal Policies Block the Informal Sector in the Maputo Corridor

This paper focuses on one of the most interesting cross-border regions in Africa, the so-called Maputo corridor. 

For more than a century, the Maputo corridor has been an informal cross-border micro-region, constructed by millions of migrants, extensive informal trading, as well as dense socio-ethnic interactions.

Since the mid-1990s, there has been a formal project, officially known as the Maputo Development Corridor (MDC), which seeks to reconstruct and revitalise this rather informal cross-border relationship, which effectively has existed for more than a century.