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Mozambique has attracted international attention in recent years following the discovery of huge reserves of coal and gas deposits. A major focus of Mozambique’s extractives boom is the province of Tete, once a remote outpost but now a hub of power generation for the southern African region and an emerging centre of global investment in coal extraction. Some of the world’s largest mining firms from both established and emerging economies have descended on Tete, investing billions of dollars in developing concessions to extract some of the world’s largest untapped coal reserves with wide-ranging implications for the region’s political economy and effecting significant shifts in relations between state, capital and territorial control. At the urban scale, Tete city and its expanding periphery are increasingly characterised by enclaves and spaces of enclosure, as some groups benefit from and are integrated into …