think. It is not, for example, simply that local governance dynamics and corruption curtail the advancement of fiscal autonomy. It is also the very particular - and perverse - role and presence of the international community of development practitioners and their private-sector counterparts that enables and helps build the very rational logics behind why local authorities continue to depend on foreign funds to launch major capital investments. The shift from a social contract between government and local residents to a financial contract between government and foreign agents, however, is problematic for deepening democracy and urban autonomy. While the evidence presented here is from Maputo, it is likely that other African capital cities with low own-source revenue generation and high participation of foreign actors - from both the donor and private sector communities - are experiencing similar phenomena on the ground, with the densification and growth of dual housing markets and high- end housing coupled with infrastructures that primarily serve those higher-end communities. The deep perversity of this phenomenon is that some of the same actors - namely international donors - promoting equitable urban development in name are in practice aggravating urban inequalities through their own footprint in the city, the convenient decision-making logics they bolster with regard to their own taxation, and their own operational and employment strategies. To be certain, they are not alone; private capital, whether foreign or domestic, plays a key role in the evolution of material inequalities across Maputo. The difference is that these latter groups do not make it their business to promote sustainable and equitable development in the same way that the aid community does. The international and bilateral development industry is no stranger to criticism. However, its internal modes of operation on the ground and its own physical needs typically escape the kinds of critical analyses that have effectively deconstructed the developmentalist and often neoliberal rationales that guide aid interventions on the ground. The real estate boom over the past decade and the dual housing markets catering to so many foreign nationals across cities like Maputo make legible the material role of development professionals in the persistence of unevenness in the production of spaces across low-income environments. Especially within capital cities, the diversification and density of the industry of development professionals and their private sector counterparts point to a need for internal reform within organizations that lay claim to goals like fostering sustainable and equitable development in low-income environments.

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