In 2015, the Mozambican government launched the National Agriculture Mechanisation Programme with the aim of increasing agricultural production and productivity. The programme set to establish Agrarian Service Centres (CSAs) across the country for the provision of mechanisation services to smallholder farmers. The majority of these centres were set up by private operators that won contracts with the government to purchase farming machinery at subsidised prices in exchange for running the centres and servicing the population. The new machinery that equipped the centres, mainly tractors and tractor implements for ploughing and harrowing, had been publicly procured with funds from a concessional loan provided by the government of Brazil, as part of South-South cooperation. Mozambique’s predominantly smallholders farmers rely on short-handed hoes for ploughing and cannot afford to buy machinery. The programme has promised to target mainly these farmers by providing services through privately managed centres that are expected to be more efficient that the publicly managed programmes of the past. Yet, emerging evidence suggests that smallholder farmers, farming small, uneven, rugged and disperse lands, have trouble accessing the services, even when they have the ability to pay. Centres tend to prioritise clients with clear and larger plots that ensure efficient tractor utilisation and reduce the risk of broken parts. This paper analyses the initial implementation of this public-private mechanisation programme by focusing specifically on the CSAs managers and the mechanisation networks emerging around them. Equipped with land, new machinery and other resources and social networks, will these managers emerge as the modern agricultural entrepreneur? And with what implication for local agrarian relations?