MOZAMBIQUE Facts, History and Geography

OFFICIAL NAME

República de Moçambique (Republic of Mozambique)

FORM OF GOVERNMENT

A multiparty republic with a single legislative house (Assembly of the Republic )

HEAD OF STATE AND GOVERNMENT

President: Filipe Nyusi

CAPITAL

Maputo

OFFICIAL LANGUAGE

Portuguese

MONETARY UNIT

(new) metical (MTn; plural meticais)

POPULATION

(2018 est.) 29,824,000

POPULATION RANK

(2018) 46

POPULATION PROJECTION 2030

38,381,000

TOTAL AREA (SQ MI)

308,642

TOTAL AREA (SQ KM)

799,380

DENSITY: PERSONS PER SQ MI

(2018) 96.6

DENSITY: PERSONS PER SQ KM

(2018) 37.3

URBAN-RURAL POPULATION

Urban: (2018) 36%

Rural: (2018) 64%

LIFE EXPECTANCY AT BIRTH

Male: (2016) 52 years

Female: (2016) 56.2 years

LITERACY: PERCENTAGE OF POPULATION AGE 15 AND OVER LITERATE

Male: (2015) 70.8%

Female: (2015) 43.1%

GNI (U.S.$ ’000,000)

(2017) 12,300

GNI PER CAPITA (U.S.$)

(2017) 420

Introduction

Mozambique, a scenic country in southeastern Africa. Mozambique is rich in natural resources, is biologically and culturally diverse, and has a tropical climate. Its extensive coastline, fronting the Mozambique Channel, which separates mainland Africa from the island of Madagascar, offers some of Africa’s best natural harbours. These have allowed Mozambique an important role in the maritime economy of the Indian Ocean, while the country’s white sand beaches are an important attraction for the growing tourism industry. Fertile soils in the northern and central areas of Mozambique have yielded a varied and abundant agriculture, and the great Zambezi River has provided ample water for irrigation and the basis for a regionally important hydroelectric power industry.

Yet Mozambique’s turbulent recent history has kept its people from fully enjoying these natural advantages and from developing a stable, diversified economy. A former colony of Portugal, Mozambique provided mineral and agricultural products to its distant ruler while receiving few services in return. Following independence in 1975, Mozambique was torn by internal conflict as the Marxist government, supported in part by the Soviet Union and Cuba, battled anticommunist

forces funded by South Africa and the former Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) for control of the country. Marked by countless acts of terror, the ensuing warfare displaced at least four million people and resulted in the death of perhaps a million more as a result of the violence, famine, and disease it engendered. Violence and disunity hindered economic development, especially the broadening of tourism, and discouraged foreign investment. The conflict formally ended in 1992, but its lingering effects are many: in the early 21st century, as many as one million unexploded land mines still remained along the country’s trails and roads, and much political strife continued between the major opposition forces and the central government.

In 2005, as part of a torch relay program to mark 30 years of independence, President Armando Guebuza noted that the torch’s flame was a symbol of Mozambique’s history and would light the people’s path “to the consolidation of independence and construction of their well-being.” As the torch was passed to a Mozambican born in the year that the country gained its independence, Guebuza remarked

The capital is Maputo. Known until independence as Lourenço Marques, the city boasts fine colonial-era architecture and an attractive natural setting alongside the deepwater harbour of Maputo Bay. Maputo is the commercial and cultural centre of the country, and its sidewalk cafés, bars, and discotheques offer some of the liveliest nightlife in southern Africa. Other major cities and towns, most of which lie on or near the Indian Ocean coast, include Beira, Quelimane, Chimoio, Tete, Nampula, and Nacala.

Land

Mozambique is about the size of the combined areas of the U.S. states of Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah; most of its territory stretches along the Indian Ocean coast from Cape (Cabo) Delgado in the north past the capital city of Maputo in the south. It is bordered to the north by Tanzania, to the east by the Mozambique Channel, which separates it from the island of Madagascar, to the south and southwest by South Africa and Swaziland, to the west by Zimbabwe, and to the northwest by Zambia, Malawi, and Lake Nyasa.

People

Ethnic groups

The people of Mozambique are ethnically diverse, but ethnic categories are fluid and reflect the country’s colonial history. All inhabitants of the country were designated Portuguese in 1961, and some ethnic classifications such as Makua-Lomwe were created by colonial Portuguese officials themselves. Within the country, in addition to the Makua-Lomwe, live the Tsonga, Sena, Ndau (see Shona), Chopi, Chewa, Yao, Makonde, and Ngoni.

In terms of cultural organization, the Zambezi valley again provides Mozambique’s key marker, roughly dividing groups that trace their heritage according to principles of matrilineality to the north and groups that order themselves along patrilineal lines to the south. In matrilineal groups, authority rests in the senior male of the extended family traced through the female line, whereas in patrilineal groups the senior male is identified through the male line. Throughout the 20th century, however, many matrilineal groups adopted patrilineality and virilocal settlement, with new families settling in a household of the husband’s lineage rather than the wife’s.

Languages

Although Portuguese, the official language, is the main language of only a tiny fraction of the population, it is spoken as a lingua franca by some two-fifths of the country’s inhabitants. Portuguese speakers are strongly concentrated in the capital of Maputo and other urban areas.

The vast majority of Mozambicans speak languages from the Bantu branch of the Niger-Congo language group. Within the Bantu group, Makua, Lomwe, Tsonga, Sena, Shona, and Chuabo are the most widespread languages, but the country has great linguistic and cultural variety because it shares languages with surrounding countries: Swahili with many East African countries, Yao with Malawi and Tanzania, Makonde with Tanzania, the Ngoni and Chewa dialects of Nyanja with Malawi and Tanzania, Shona with Zimbabwe, and Shangaan (a dialect of Tsonga) with South Africa and Swaziland. Similarly, small groups in the far south and throughout the country share Nguni languages (Zulu and Swati) with South African and Zimbabwean peoples as a result of major population movements of the early 19th century. Groups speaking European and Asian languages are largely limited to the port cities of Maputo, Beira, Quelimane, Nacala, and Pemba.

Makua and Lomwe are spoken by almost half of the population and dominate northeastern Mozambique except in two areas: the coastal strip north of the Lúrio River, where Swahili is typically spoken, and a large pocket on the Tanzanian border that is inhabited predominantly by Makonde speakers. Most of the population speaks Yao in the region that extends westward from the confluence of the Rovuma and Lugenda rivers to the border with Malawi, while Nyanja is commonly spoken in the rough triangle from the juncture of the Shire and Zambezi rivers northwest to the border with Zambia. Shona speakers, more than one-tenth of the population, dominate the region between the Save River and the Zambezi valley. South of the Save, Tsonga is spoken by almost one-seventh of the population.

Economy

The colonial economy was characterized by private monopolies, central planning, and state marketing of key products—all designed to promote capital accumulation by the state, Portuguese settlers, and Portuguese-based commerce and industry. Colonial policy excluded most Africans from highly skilled and managerial positions until the years immediately preceding independence. After independence the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique; Frelimo) government tried to change the colonial economic patterns by nationalizing key properties, promoting African education and training, and breaking up the Portuguese and South Asian hold on commercial distribution. Despite Frelimo’s public stand against ethnic discrimination, Portuguese settlers and South Asian traders—threatened by the government’s economic policies—left by the thousands. Settlers anticipating nationalization abandoned their properties, adding by default to the proportion of the national economy that the state controlled, and large-scale state-run farms and communal and cooperative farming replaced the settler and company plantations. Frelimo’s agricultural undertakings proved unproductive and unmanageable, however, and, in combination with the flight of South Asian merchants and the instability caused by guerrilla warfare, much of the country’s agricultural production, commerce, and distribution system collapsed. In an effort to rebuild the economy, the state ultimately reoriented economic policy in accordance with plans imposed by the International Monetary Fund, which emphasized decentralization and privatization and provided assistance to family farmers.

Although agriculture has been the most widespread economic activity, remittances from migrant labourers in South Africa and revenues from tourism and the country’s port and railway sector have been equally important historically as sources of foreign exchange. While all these sectors declined severely during the 1980s and early ’90s because of civil unrest, they rebounded after the 1992 peace accord, and the industry sector —specifically, resource exploitation, aluminum smelting, and electricity production—also expanded. By the early 21st century, Mozambique had attained a significant amount of economic growth.

Agriculture, forestry, and fishing

Although agriculture employs about four-fifths of the country’s workforce, it constitutes only about one-fifth of Mozambique’s gross domestic product. Most agricultural production comes from family farming operations, which produce the two staple crops of corn (maize)—in which Mozambique was self-sufficient by 1997—and cassava, as well as beans, rice, and a variety of vegetables and oilseeds such as peanuts (groundnuts), sesame, and sunflowers. Family labour is also responsible for gathering a large part of the cashew nut crop and produces cotton for the local market and for

export. Although agricultural output declined in most rural areas during the late 1970s and ’80s, greater social and political stability and favourable climatic conditions led to a marked increase in production in the 1990s. Agricultural performance is particularly vulnerable to natural disasters such as droughts and flooding; in 2000, for example, severe flooding in the central and southern part of the country seriously disrupted agriculture and infrastructure in the affected regions.

Sugar, tea, copra, and sisal, developed as plantation crops during the colonial era, are still produced by private plantations, state farms, government-sponsored cooperatives, and communal villages. Irrigation occurs primarily in the area along the Zambezi River that is irrigated by the Cahora Bassa Dam and in the former settler areas in the south, particularly along the Limpopo River, that are irrigated by schemes developed in the 1950s and ’60s. Production of beef and pork, formerly important, has been surpassed by poultry.

The forests along the Beira railway and in Zambézia province in the north have been exploited since independence as the country’s key source of domestic fuel, firewood, and charcoal, though South African investors are interested in Mozambique’s potential to provide wood for building materials and pulp for paper industries. The country’s forest resources were briefly exploited for both export and local building material during the 1960s and ’70s, but significant hardwood forest reserves have survived deforestation for fuel. More timber is cut than replaced by reforestation initiatives, however, and the long-term ecological effects of eucalyptus plantations are a concern.

Fishing is one area of the economy that is immune to rural insecurity. Mozambique’s offshore waters contain lobster, tuna, mackerel, sardines, and anchovies but are best known for the shrimp (prawns) that are an important export commodity. Since 1973 production and marketing of saltwater fish, shrimp, and shellfish have increased steadily.

Resources and power

Mozambique’s natural resources remained largely underdeveloped during the 1980s, but, with greater political stability after the peace accord of 1992, investment increased dramatically in a wide range of resource-development projects. The Tete highlands in the west-central region have large bituminous coal reserves at Moatize. Although exploration for oil has been disappointing, the development of large commercially viable natural gas fields at Pande and Temane in Inhambane province has been successful.

Key metallic resources include high-quality iron ore and the rare and important mineral tantalite (the principal ore of tantalum), of which Mozambique has what may be the world’s largest reserves. Gold, bauxite (the principal ore of aluminum), graphite, marble, bentonite, and limestone are mined and

quarried, and sea salt is extracted in coastal areas. Other development efforts have focused on the production of heavy mineral sands in Zambézia province and on a project to mine ilmenite (a major source of titanium) at Moma in Nampula province. Mozambique’s other mineral deposits include manganese, graphite, fluorite, platinum, nickel, uranium, asbestos, and diamonds. Foreign investors have expressed interest in expanding the development of these deposits, especially since the Mozambique government has made foreign investment more attractive.

On the strength of its resources, Mozambique should now be Southern Africa’s most important energy producer and exporter. The country’s postindependence security problems, however, undercut production in everything but refining of imported crude oil near Maputo. The centrepiece of Mozambique’s energy potential is the Cahora Bassa Dam on the upper Zambezi. Financed and constructed by an international consortium at the close of the colonial era, it was designed in cooperation with South Africa’s national power company to produce electricity largely for South Africa, not Mozambique. Upon the completion of the dam in 1974, less than one-tenth of its electrical capacity went to Mozambique, with the rest transmitted to South Africa’s industrial heartland. At the beginning of the 21st century, most of its capacity was still exported, primarily to South Africa. Portugal long held the majority share of ownership in the company that operates Cahora Bassa. After much negotiation, an agreement between Portugal and Mozambique that increased Mozambique’s share of ownership to 85 percent was implemented in 2006. Portugal agreed in 2012 to relinquish its final share of ownership over the next two years.

The entire national electrical grid was targeted by Renamo during the years of political conflict, frustrating efforts to make the best use of the country’s hydroelectric potential and forcing cities to build and improve self-contained facilities. The country was able to repair much of the national electrical grid in the years after the conflict, and at the beginning of the 21st century almost all of Mozambique’s electricity was generated by hydroelectric power. In addition to the Cahora Bassa installation, there are two privately run dams on the Revuè River that produce hydroelectric power.

Manufacturing

In 1975 Mozambique’s industrial and manufacturing sector was typical of much of colonial Africa, being based largely on minimally processed raw materials for export (shrimp, tea, sugar, cashews, citrus, copra, coal, and cotton) combined with processing and light manufacturing of commodities for local consumption. There was a sharp increase in the local manufacturing capacity from the late 1950s to the early 1970s in response to consumer demand from the burgeoning urban population. The limited development of heavier industry, such as the metalworking and railway equipment sector, was linked to trade, service, and transportation agreements with neighbouring countries.

Although much of Mozambique’s skilled labour and managerial class left the country at the end of colonial rule, industrial production increased modestly until the early 1980s, when manufacturing and construction ground to a virtual halt. By 1990 industrial production had declined by almost two-thirds. Internal conflict interrupted the supply of raw materials from within the country, and soaring debt and diminishing exports combined to strangle Mozambique’s ability to import spare parts and other materials necessary to sustain production. Sabotage and power outages exacerbated the situation.

As the country’s overall social and economic climate improved in the early 1990s, industrial development resumed. Although production levels for the cement industry have not returned to those reached in the late 1970s, other industries are expanding. An ammonia plant opened in the centre of the country in the late 1990s, and a car assembly plant began operation in 2000. A key factor in Mozambique’s economic growth was the opening of an aluminum smelter near Maputo in 2000. It is one of the world’s largest smelters of aluminum, which has become an important export for Mozambique.

Finance

The Banco de Moçambique issues the national currency, the metical (plural meticais). In 1978 Mozambique nationalized most of its banking assets, but by the mid-1990s the banking sector had been privatized. Mozambique borrowed heavily so that it could fund development, alleviate its shortage of foreign exchange, and, eventually, import basic necessities such as food; by the 1990s debt service was consuming one-fourth of annual foreign exchange earnings. In 1984 Mozambique agreed to join the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), and in 1987 the government adopted reform programs as a condition for new loans and grants. Owing to Mozambique’s success with economic reform programs, as well as the considerable amount of money it spent on debt servicing, Mozambique benefited from several debt-forgiveness plans beginning in the 1990s and continuing into the early 2000s.

Private and international investment were encouraged in the new economic climate, and by the end of the 1990s and into the 21st century the economy was benefiting from a huge growth in foreign investment. There is a stock exchange (Bolsa de Valores de Moçambique) in Maputo. The state monopoly on insurance ended in 1991.

Trade

Mozambique’s most important exports by value include aluminum, shrimp, and cotton, whereas its most important imports by value include fuel, machinery and spare parts, and food products. South

Africa is the country’s major trading partner. Other partners include the countries of the European Union and Asia. Mozambique’s highly unfavourable balance of trade slowly improved during the 1990s and early 2000s.

Services

Mozambique’s pleasant climate, beautiful beaches, and Indian Ocean islands made it an attractive vacation destination for neighbouring Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa prior to independence. However, tourism was ruined by the continuing political insecurity that came with the end of colonial rule. With the peace settlement of 1992 and the transition to majority rule governments in Zimbabwe and South Africa, tourism rebounded to the point that more tourists visit Mozambique now than before independence in 1975. Game reserves are being rehabilitated, and Mozambique has developed transnational parks and conservation areas with Swaziland and South Africa.

Labour and taxation

During the colonial period men often left to take paying jobs in neighbouring countries, and women remained behind to grow cash crops as well as crops for domestic consumption. Although women produced a significant portion of the agricultural products, they did not receive equal pay and rights. The Organization of Mozambican Women (Organização da Mulher Moçambicana; OMM) was founded by Frelimo in 1973 to mobilize women around issues of interest to them. After independence many women moved to the cities to take advantage of new economic opportunities.

Mozambican workers, including women, were guaranteed the right to form trade unions and the right to strike in the 1990 constitution. Numerous trade unions developed, many of which participated in the Organization of Mozambican Workers, a group that has openly criticized the free-market policies of the government.

Government income is derived from taxes on income and goods and services and from customs duties. Mozambique’s tax system was significantly reformed in 1996 and has been modified since then. Such modifications have included the introduction of a value-added tax in 1999 and enhancements made to tax collection and enforcement methods in 2001.

Transportation and telecommunications

Mozambique’s transportation sector reflects the country’s historical development in relation to its neighbours. The national road, railway, and port sectors were originally developed by the state and

chartered companies primarily to service the trade and transport needs of South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Malawi—Mozambique’s western neighbours. Because of this, the country has well-developed east-to-west rail and road systems that link its ports with the key industrial and mining regions of these countries. By contrast, there are few hard-surfaced roads and virtually no railroads oriented north-south.

Mozambique’s potential as a transport centre for the interior is on par with its energy capabilities, with the international ports at Maputo, Beira, and Nacala among the best on the continent. There are also smaller, less developed ports from Pemba in the north to Inhambane in the south. The port and railway complex at Maputo was established at the end of the 19th century in response to the developing gold- and coal-mining industries of Johannesburg and northeastern South Africa. The colonial state managed to link the mining industry’s access to Mozambican contract labour with a commitment to export a substantial fixed portion of the region’s mineral exports through Maputo, thus guaranteeing service and customs revenues for the port. Subsequent rail lines linked Maputo with Swaziland and, in 1955, with the Gweru mining area of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

Beira provides road and rail access to Zimbabwe through what has come to be called the Beira Corridor. It is also linked by rail to Malawi and to the Moatize coal mines near Tete. The rail links from Beira to Zimbabwe and Malawi were originally developed by the Mozambique Company and taken over by the Portuguese colonial government in 1947. When Zimbabwe became independent in 1980, international investors from the United Kingdom took a renewed interest in rehabilitating and upgrading the corridor, which, though closed briefly during the internal conflict, was reopened in 1987 with support from Zimbabwean military patrols.

Nacala, although damaged by a cyclone in the mid-1990s, has the country’s best natural harbour and newest port facilities and is well placed to serve agricultural development in the north. Malawi has a railway line to connect with Nacala’s port and railway.

Ferry service is available along the lower Zambezi at both Luabo and Marromeu and above Cahora Bassa between Chicoa and Zumbo, an area that lies near the point where Mozambique meets both Zambia and Zimbabwe. Ferries also serve Lake Nyasa, with Mozambican ports at Metangula and Meponda.

Private aircraft were the first to fly regularly in Mozambique, but after World War II Portugal’s national airline opened a route between Beira and Maputo. Eventually colonial Mozambique developed its own airline. It was replaced in 1980 by Mozambique Airlines (Linhas Aéreas de Moçambique; LAM), the national carrier, which also provides international service. Mozambique has a number of domestic airports and international airports at Beira, Vilanculos, and Maputo.

Most of the existing network of internal connecting roads and airstrips in the northern and central areas was developed during the 1960s and ’70s as part of Portugal’s counterinsurgency strategy that emphasized air transportation as an alternate to the less-safe rural roadways. Airline passenger traffic developed in inverse proportion to that of the railways and roads, increasing steadily from the late 1970s as road and railway passage declined in response to the threat of ambush. North-south domestic travel in the country is therefore better served by the airlines than by the more east-west- oriented road or rail system.

Partly in response to long waits for installation of land phone service, the use of cellular telephones expanded rapidly in the early 21st century; Internet use and access, however, were limited and increased at a far slower pace.

Government And Society

Constitutional framework

The Mozambique Liberation Front (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique; Frelimo) led the armed insurgency against Portuguese colonial rule and came to power in 1975, at which time Mozambique became a people’s republic. Under the 1975 constitution, produced by the Central Committee of Frelimo, the party’s president served as the president of the country. The president was also the head of the Council of Ministers, the People’s Assembly, and Frelimo’s Central Committee, as well as the commander in chief of the armed forces. Since membership in Frelimo was a prerequisite for any political office, the most powerful national and provincial offices tended to circulate among a fairly small group of trusted party members.

Colonial legislation was allowed to stand unless it was specifically judged to contradict the spirit of the new constitution. Legislation and judicial principles and practice evolved piecemeal through the work of popular assemblies and popular tribunals. In the early 1980s, for example, capital offenses were expanded to include political and nonviolent crimes such as hoarding and smuggling, and public flogging was reintroduced.

A new constitution, which introduced major changes in the government—multiparty elections, universal adult suffrage, and the secret ballot—was adopted in November 1990. Presidential term limits were outlined; a parliament was established with limited ability to veto executive action; the death penalty was abolished; and freedom of the press, the workers’ right to strike, and the concept of habeas corpus were confirmed.

Under the 1990 constitution, which has been amended, the president serves as the head of state and government, is elected to a five-year term through universal suffrage, and can be reelected to a consecutive term only once. The president is assisted by the prime minister and the Council of Ministers. The president may also seek counsel from the Council of State, an advisory body provided for by a 2004 amendment to the constitution.

Members of the legislature, the Assembly of the Republic, are elected to five-year terms by universal suffrage. Among the Assembly’s powers are the ability to ratify the suspension of constitutional guarantees, approve the appointment of the president and deputy president of the Supreme Court, and grant amnesties and pardons.

Local government and justice

For administrative purposes, Mozambique is divided into 10 provinces (Cabo Delgado, Niassa, Nampula, Zambézia, Tete, Sofala, Manica, Maputo, Inhambane, and Gaza) and the capital city of Maputo; the president appoints the governor of each province. The provinces, in turn, are divided into districts and localities.

The judicial system consists of the Supreme Court, the Administrative Court, and lower courts. Judges are appointed by the president after consultation with the Superior Council of the Judiciary or the Superior Council of the Administrative Judiciary.

Political process

After independence the Mozambique National Resistance (Resistência Nacional Moçambicana; Renamo) was created by whites in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and sought to destabilize the Frelimo regime. Internal conflict raged throughout Mozambique from the late 1970s until 1992. Throughout this period Frelimo remained Mozambique’s sole political party; however, multiparty elections began in 1994. Frelimo and Renamo continue to be the major parties, but there are a handful of others.

Universal suffrage is guaranteed by the 1990 constitution. By the early 21st century, women had begun to serve in significant numbers in the Assembly of the Republic and on the Council of Ministers, and in 2004 Luisa Diogo was named prime minister—the first woman to hold the post in Mozambique.

Security

Mozambique’s national army has its roots in the Frelimo army that developed during the anticolonial liberation struggle. Women had been integrated into the Frelimo army during this time, although this action was opposed by many males in the army. After independence the only military challenges Mozambique faced were the result of its support for the independence movements in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa. In response, both of those countries backed Renamo’s guerrilla efforts against the Mozambican government throughout the 1980s. Therefore, necessity dictated that Mozambique’s military be larger than those of surrounding countries without such internal strife. After the end of the conflict in 2002, the number of troops dwindled; legislation making military service compulsory was enacted in 1997.

History

During the colonial era Mozambique’s history was written as though it had begun with the arrival of the Portuguese, but the people of this region had developed complex communities based on agriculture, cattle raising, mining, crafts, and trade long before the first small groups of Portuguese settlers arrived in the 16th century. Archaeological and historical research since 1950 has begun to reintegrate Mozambique’s past with that of East, Central, and Southern Africa.

The rise of the Zimbabwe civilizations

The groups on the Zimbabwe plateau expanded their herds and moved between the plateau and the surrounding Mozambican lowlands in pursuit of seasonal pastures, although the tsetse fly, which causes sleeping sickness, was present in the region. The region’s economy was rooted in agriculture and cattle keeping, but its social and political organization became more complex with the development of local industries and trade, specifically the mining of gold, copper, and iron ore and the development of salt pans, tool forges, and potting industries. The civilization of Great Zimbabwe, which dominated the region politically from the mid-13th to the mid-15th century, controlled mining and trade.

The zimbabwe settlement at Manekweni, about 30 miles (50 km) from the Indian Ocean in southern Mozambique, replicated in miniature the social and settlement patterns of the highland interior. Manekweni was a centre for agriculture, cattle keeping, and the gold trade from about the 12th to the 18th century.

From roughly the 10th to the 18th century, Great Zimbabwe and the area of Central Africa around Lake Kisale (in present-day Katanga province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo) were the region’s centres of production and intra-African trade. Beginning in at least the 1st millennium, however, people of this region traded with various non-Africans. The earliest and most important external trade link for Mozambique was with Middle Eastern and South Asian peoples who traded beads and cloth for gold across the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.

By the 14th century, African Arab, or Swahili, trade cities were flourishing along the coast from Somalia in the north to Kilwa in what is now southern Tanzania. Smaller Swahili sultanates developed along the northern coast of Mozambique as far south as Angoche. A series of markets had arisen throughout the region by the 16th century, sustained by intraregional trade in raw materials and long-distance trade in gold, copper, ivory, and slaves.

Arrival of the Portuguese

The voyage of Vasco da Gama around the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian Ocean in 1498 marked the European entry into trade, politics, and society in the Indian Ocean world. The Portuguese gained control of the Island of Mozambique and the port city of Sofala in the early 16th century, and by the 1530s small groups of Portuguese had pushed their way into the interior, where they set up garrisons and trading posts at Sena and Tete on the Zambezi River and tried to gain exclusive control over the gold trade. The Portuguese attempted to legitimate and consolidate their trade and settlement positions through the creation of prazos (land grants) tied to European occupation. While prazos were originally developed to be held by Europeans, through intermarriage they became African Portuguese or African Indian centres defended by large African slave armies known as Chikunda. Most prazos had declined by the mid-19th century, but several of them survived and strongly resisted Portuguese domination until the last quarter of the 19th century.

The Portuguese were able to wrest much of the coastal trade from Arabs between 1500 and 1700, but, with the Arab seizure of Portugal’s key foothold at Fort Jesus on Mombasa (now in Kenya) in 1698, the pendulum began to swing in the other direction. During the 18th and 19th centuries the Mazrui and Omani Arabs reclaimed much of the Indian Ocean trade, forcing the Portuguese to retreat south. During the 19th century other European powers, particularly the British and the French, became increasingly involved in the trade and politics of the region.

Colonial Mozambique Consolidation of Portuguese control

By the 1880s the Portuguese controlled trade and collected tribute in coastal enclaves from Ibo in the north to Lourenço Marques in the south, but their ability to control events outside those areas was quite limited; that situation, however, was about to change. Increasingly, as neighbours of the Gaza state were raided periodically for refusing to pay tribute, they began to ally themselves with the Portuguese, which the Portuguese both encouraged and exploited. In the 1890s a coalition of Portuguese troops and African armies marched against the state. When the Gaza leadership was finally defeated in 1897, southern Mozambique passed into Portuguese control. Two decades later the Portuguese, who had mounted dozens of military campaigns by that time, directly controlled the Barue of central Mozambique, the African Portuguese of the Zambezi and Maganja da Costa prazos, the Yao of Mataka, the northern Makua chiefdoms, and the northern coastal sheikhdoms of Angoche.

Trade in ivory, gold, slaves, rubber, oilseeds, and a broad range of European goods continued throughout the 19th century. However, European economic interest and influence in the region changed rapidly by mid-century in response to developments in both Africa and Europe. African labour was needed on the sugar plantations and at South African ports and mines after diamonds (at Kimberley in the 1860s) and gold (at Witwatersrand in the 1880s) were discovered. Because of the need for labour, Europeans were determined to gain greater control over tracts of land and their inhabitants at the expense of African leadership. The combined struggle for access to mineral- bearing lands and the labour force to work them fueled the so-called “scramble” in Southern Africa.

Portugal claimed a swath of territory from present-day Mozambique to Angola. Although the Germans, whose territory bordered Mozambique to the north, accepted the Portuguese claims— establishing Mozambique’s northern boundary—British claims to the region contradicted those of Portugal, leading to prolonged negotiations. However, the Portuguese crown was heavily in debt to British financiers, and the small country was no match for Britain’s military; in 1891 Portugal was forced to accept Britain’s definition of Mozambique’s western and southern boundaries.

Portugal had little hope of developing the entire region on its own, and so it turned to its familiar colonial strategy of leasing large tracts of land to private companies. Chartered companies were granted the privilege of exploiting the lands and peoples of specific areas in exchange for an obligation to develop agriculture, communications, social services, and trade. The Mozambique Company, the Niassa Company, and the Zambezia Company were all established in this manner in the 1890s. Any economic development and investment in infrastructure was related directly to company interests and usually undertaken at African expense. Sugar, copra, and sisal plantations depending largely on conscripted labour and railways linking Beira with the British South Africa Company territory and British Nyasaland to the west and northwest were all developed and built at a high cost to the African workforce.

The Portuguese government eventually terminated the charters of the major concession companies, bringing all of Mozambique under direct Portuguese rule. Between the 1890s and the 1930s, Portuguese rule in Mozambique was characterized by the exploitation of African people and resources by private parties, whether they were foreign company shareholders or colonial bureaucrats and settlers. The most egregious colonial abuses—forced labour, forced crop cultivation, high taxes, low wages, confiscation of the most promising lands—occurred regardless of which group of Europeans was in control.

Mozambique under the New State regime

The 1926 coup in Portugal created a Portuguese regime that came to be known as the “New State” (Estado Novo). Although most of the former abuses in Mozambique continued and in some cases

were intensified, the New State consolidated the profit into fewer hands and promoted conditions that would favour capital accumulation by Portugal and the Portuguese over all others. While the administrative and educational systems in Mozambique were unified and developed more coherently under the New State, they were still principally directed toward settlers.

Colonial investment patterns began to change in the early 1950s, when Portugal set forth a series of development plans designed to extend and upgrade Mozambique’s transportation and communications infrastructure. Portuguese who had exploited monopolies and incentives to great profit were encouraged to invest in, expand, and diversify their undertakings. The generally favourable prices for tropical commodities in the post-World War II era fueled the trend, and the colonial economy expanded vigorously. At the same time, the New State retained tight control over the economic and physical mobility of the Africans, and thousands of Portuguese settlers arrived in the 1950s and ’60s to take advantage of employment and business opportunities denied to Africans. But in promoting these policies, Portuguese colonial authorities antagonized Africans of all social classes.

The African leadership that emerged in the late 1950s represented a broad cross section of the population and was able to channel considerable discontent against colonial power. Because the New State dealt with any form of political dissent with imprisonment, deportation, or execution, the formal political challenge to the regime developed among African workers and students living outside Mozambique. In 1962 Mozambican representatives from exiled political groups met in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) and formed the socialist Mozambique Liberation Front (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique; Frelimo), with Eduardo Mondlane as its first president.

Frelimo’s strategy was not immediately clear, but, after serious internal debate, the ascendant leadership committed itself to an armed challenge. Frelimo’s guerrilla forces, which had been trained and armed by African and Soviet-bloc supporters, attacked targets in northern Mozambique in September 1964, and the war for independence was launched. Portugal, faced with similar challenges in all its African territories (Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Cape Verde), responded with enormous military effort. Mondlane was killed in 1969, but the leadership of Frelimo was ably assumed by Samora Machel, and the Portuguese remained frustrated and militarily ineffectual against Frelimo’s small-scale guerrilla engagements. By 1974 Frelimo forces could move about most of the north in relative freedom and had infiltrated central Mozambique, although the cities, most of the south, and the coastal areas as far north as Nacala remained in Portuguese hands.

In April 1974 the military in Portugal staged a coup, which was welcomed by those Portuguese who were unhappy with the New State regime, its African wars, and its ideology. Frelimo took advantage of its military position to insist on a cease-fire, which confirmed its right to assume power in an

independent Mozambique. A quickly aborted countercoup attempt in Maputo in September and some rioting in October were the only overt challenges to Frelimo’s authority. Within a year of the Portuguese coup, most of the settler population had left Mozambique, and on June 25, 1975, Mozambique became an independent, single-party state led by Frelimo, with Machel serving as president.

Independence

Mozambique as a one-party state

Frelimo’s solidarity with other African guerrilla groups fighting for political rights in the region strongly shaped events after it controlled the entire country. Mozambicans widely supported Frelimo’s decisions to close the border with Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), to implement international sanctions against the country, and to allow its guerrilla forces to develop bases in Mozambique, but these decisions proved costly when Mozambique suffered major losses of revenue and lives and the destruction of key infrastructure. Frelimo’s support for the African National Congress (ANC) brought similar economic and military retribution from the white regime in South Africa.

Frelimo had mixed success with its social and economic policies during its first decade of rule. Forced cultivation, forced labour, and ethnic discrimination were ended, but the party’s commitment to communal, cooperative, and state-run agriculture antagonized many African farmers, who had hoped to see land returned to their families. By 1985 Frelimo recognized the failure of its agricultural policy of moving farmers into communal villages. Under pressure from international creditors, it began de-emphasizing state ownership and control of markets in favour of the family agricultural sector.

The government’s extensive investment in education, health care, and services for the majority population was initially highly successful. Within a decade of independence, however, these gains had been totally undermined by the actions of the Mozambique National Resistance (Resistência Nacional Moçambicana; Renamo), an insurgency group trained, supplied, and supported by Rhodesia, South Africa, former Portuguese settlers, and Mozambicans opposed to Frelimo. Renamo began economic sabotage and a campaign of terror against the rural population shortly after independence. In 1984 the governments of Mozambique and South Africa signed the Nkomati Accord, under which each country would no longer support the other country’s opposition movement (ANC in South Africa and Renamo in Mozambique). Because this agreement did little to curb Renamo’s activity and was violated by South Africa, Frelimo continued attempts to end the conflict through negotiation. The leaders of Frelimo and Renamo finally accepted a peace agreement in

October 1992, whereby Frelimo’s leadership agreed to change the constitution and to open the political process to competing parties in exchange for Renamo’s promise to end the war. Issues between the two groups were not totally resolved until 1994.

Peace in Mozambique

The multiparty elections that finally took place in October 1994 were the culmination of years of effort to reach a peaceful end to the war between Frelimo and Renamo. Frelimo, once a self-described Marxist-Leninist vanguard party and still progressive if not clearly socialist, made several important concessions to the peace process. Mozambique joined the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1984 and adopted their demands to privatize the economy under a structural-adjustment program. Several years later Joaquim Chissano, who had become Mozambique’s president when Machel died in a plane crash in 1986, introduced a new constitution that ended Frelimo’s one-party rule and Mozambique’s identity as a socialist country. That constitution allowed for multiparty elections, though other goals had to be met before elections could be held.

Renamo changed its image as an international pariah known for burning schools and health clinics and became a legitimate political party. Renamo’s leader, Afonso Dhlakama, met with international political leaders and was accepted as a presidential candidate. During the election campaign the United Nations provided military and civilian police, who supervised the activities of their Mozambican counterparts, while the European Union supplied election materials. Although Frelimo and Renamo were the main contenders in the elections, many other smaller parties also emerged, including several founded by Mozambican businessmen who had been in exile for years. There were a dozen presidential candidates and a similar number of parties fielding candidates for the National Assembly. The elections were considered free and fair by international observers, with Frelimo president Chissano garnering the majority of the votes. Renamo, however, was strongly represented in the national government and the National Assembly.

The new government faced the lingering effects of the war, notably the presence of up to two million land mines in the countryside. An international operation has cleared some areas of mines, especially along roads, but many rural areas remain endangered. The effort to demobilize both Frelimo and Renamo forces and form a new, unified military also met with delays and difficulties, and in the mid-1990s soldiers waiting in demobilization camps for weeks without food, money, or prospects for work staged scattered violent uprisings.

In the early 21st century, Mozambique suffered several natural disasters, including drought, an earthquake, and devastating floods. The country’s economic growth, though adversely affected by

these events, was bolstered by significant debt relief and by economic reform measures enacted by the government. The country also saw an economic boom as foreign investors were drawn to existing and newly discovered sources of coal and natural gas. The new century also ushered in a change in leadership: in 2001 Chissano announced that he would not stand in the next presidential election. Frelimo, however, maintained control of the presidency when its candidate, Armando Guebuza, was victorious in the 2004 presidential election. He was reelected with 75 percent of the vote in 2009, easily defeating Renamo’s candidate, Dhlakama, and Daviz Simango, who earlier that year had broken from Renamo to form the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM). Frelimo also maintained control of the legislature, winning about three-quarters of the seats.

The 2014 elections

Given the recent discontent, the October 2014 presidential and legislative elections were hotly contested. With Guebuza constitutionally barred from serving a third term, Frelimo’s candidate was Filipe Nyusi, who faced off against Dhlakama and MDM’s Simango. Although Nyusi handily defeated his opponents—he garnered about 57 percent of the vote, while Dhlakama and Simango won about 36 percent and 6 percent, respectively—Frelimo in general did not perform as strongly as in the previous election. Frelimo managed to maintain the most seats in the legislature, but the party saw its share of seats drop from about three-quarters to slightly more than one-half.

Economic developments

Meanwhile, Mozambique’s impressive economic growth slowed dramatically in 2016, partly because of a drop in commodity prices that had begun the previous year as well as an alarming admission by the government that it had a large amount of undeclared debt, later found to be worth about $2 billion. Even more troubling was the fact that some one-fourth of the money could not be accounted for. As a result of the debt admission, the IMF, World Bank, and other donors suspended aid to the country, exacerbating the existing economic problems. The fallout included Mozambique’s default in early 2017 on a high-profile and recently restructured loan. In spite of its challenges, Mozambique was still poised to see impressive economic growth again on the basis of its natural gas reserves, although this was not expected to have a significant impact on the country’s economy for at least a few more years.

The 2019 cyclones

In March 2019 Mozambique was pummeled by Cyclone Idai, which killed about 600 people and devastated a sizable swath of the country. Hardest hit was the port city of Beira, which was almost completely destroyed. This was followed in April by another cyclone, named Kenneth, which hit the northern part of the country and left more than 40 people dead. In all, more than 162,000 Mozambicans were estimated to have been displaced by the two storms.