Pragmatic security shift? How Mozambique bypassed SADC in favour of Rwanda and why it matters

This article examines Mozambique’s foreign policy decision to bypass the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in favour of a bilateral security partnership with Rwanda during the Cabo Delgado insurgency. Presented as a pragmatic response to urgent threats, this shift instead reflects deeper transformations in African security governance. Drawing on process tracing and fieldwork in Mozambique, the analysis shows how elite interests, institutional inefficiencies, and regional power dynamics intersected in shaping this choice. Using new regionalism, the rational actor model, and neopatrimonialism, the article argues that the decision was not merely strategic but also deeply political, rooted in informal networks, economic imperatives and the erosion of multilateral legitimacy. The case demonstrates how small states in the Global South can act as strategic agents, challenging assumptions of passivity in global norms diffusion. Mozambique’s trajectory contributes to wider debates on sovereignty, African agency and the rise of bilateralism, raising critical questions about the future relevance of regional organisations such as SADC in responding to insurgency, terrorism and other transnational security challenges. More broadly, it shows how bilateral security choices can both reflect and accelerate the weakening of regional multilateral frameworks.