A geospatial dataset of historical state farms in North-Central Mozambique v1.0

This dataset comprises the location and, when available, boundaries, of former state farms from the post-colonial period in four provinces of North-Central Mozambique, i.e. Zambezia, Nampula, Niassa and Cabo Delgado in Mozambique. The data and sources are presented in an accompanying report. The data are presented in three layers: polygons, points, and buffers. For a few farms, we could delineate a polygon representing the boundaries of the farm. For the others (the majority), we could only identify a point corresponding to the presumed location of the farm. When the area of the farm was available from West and Myers (1996), we created a circular buffer around that point, to represent an indicative area affected by the farm. All farms included in the buffer layer are also included in the point layer. If multiple points are associated with one operation, the total area is divided between them. No polygon was created if area data was missing. The initial source of information was West and Myers (1996), triangulated and completed with the below-described sources. We acknowledge that this dataset remains very coarse and could be strongly improved, and welcome and are willing to support any efforts to do so with our field knowledge and documentation (which includes further maps and historical documents than presented here). The data were used in Bey (2021), Chapter 5: "How land tenure influences large-scale tree plantation expansion in Northern Mozambique". Large tracts of land have been granted to several forestry companies in the early 2000s, including land likely to have been occupied by state farms historically. The maps could be improved by a more thorough comparison of historical maps and description of state farms and recent assessment of forestry plantations in the region (Bey and Meyfroidt, 2020), and by improving the tracing of the continuity between colonial and postcolonial farms (Jorge, 2020). More information on previous waves of large and medium-scale investments in Northern Mozambique and beyond can be found in Abeygunawardane et al. (2022), Kronenburg García et al. (2022).