MozambiqueMoçambique

Long before Europeans arrived, the northern coast belonged to the Indian Ocean world. From about the 9th century Swahili towns — Angoche, Quelimane, Sofala and the island that later gave the country its name — traded gold, ivory and slaves from the interior for cloth, glass beads and porcelain carried on the monsoon winds from Arabia, Persia and India.

Sofala, near present-day Beira, was the outlet for gold from the Zimbabwe plateau, the trade that built Great Zimbabwe. Islam arrived with the merchants and took root among coastal peoples; the north coast is still largely Muslim, and its architecture, food and language carry Swahili traces.

Inland, Bantu-speaking farming peoples had settled the country from the early first millennium. By the time of the Portuguese, the Mutapa state on the Zimbabwe plateau controlled much of the gold route, and the Zambezi valley was a corridor of trade and power that outsiders would fight over for centuries.

Vasco da Gama called at Ilha de Moçambique in 1498, and within a decade Portugal had seized Sofala and built a fortress on the island. The Fortress of São Sebastião, begun in 1558, still anchors the island's northern tip. For three centuries Ilha was the capital of Portuguese East Africa and a stop on the Carreira da Índia to Goa.

Portuguese control inland was thin. In the Zambezi valley, huge land grants called prazos passed to Afro-Portuguese families who ran private armies and traded slaves. The 19th-century slave trade shipped people from Mozambique to Brazil, the Indian Ocean islands and the Americas. Portugal only conquered the whole territory after the 1880s scramble for Africa, often by leasing it to chartered companies.

The capital moved to Lourenço Marques, today's Maputo, in 1898, pulled south by the railway to the Transvaal gold mines. Much of the colonial economy served neighbours: Mozambican men worked in South African mines, the ports of Beira and Lourenço Marques shipped Rhodesian and Transvaal goods, and forced cotton and rice cultivation fed Portugal. Under Salazar's Estado Novo, settlers arrived in large numbers after 1950.

Frelimo, the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique, was founded in exile in Dar es Salaam in 1962 under Eduardo Mondlane and began its armed struggle in the northern provinces in 1964. Mondlane was assassinated in 1969; Samora Machel took over. When Portugal's 1974 Carnation Revolution ended the colonial wars, Mozambique became independent on 25 June 1975.

Machel declared a Marxist-Leninist one-party state, nationalised land and housing, and backed the liberation movements in Rhodesia and South Africa. Most Portuguese settlers left within months, taking skills and capital. Rhodesia and then apartheid South Africa sponsored Renamo, an insurgent movement that grew into a nationwide rebel army.

The civil war from 1977 to 1992 was among the most destructive in Africa: about a million people died, millions fled, and landmines were scattered across the countryside. Machel died in a plane crash inside South Africa in 1986. His successor Joaquim Chissano turned to the market and negotiated the Rome General Peace Accords of 1992; the first multiparty elections followed in 1994. Mozambique declared itself free of known minefields in 2015.

Frelimo has won every election since. Renamo fought a low-level conflict again between 2013 and 2019 before a new peace deal. The 2024 election, won by Frelimo's Daniel Chapo, was disputed by opposition candidate Venâncio Mondlane, and months of protests, road blockades and a violent crackdown followed into 2025.

In the 2010s huge natural gas fields were found off Cabo Delgado, the northernmost province, promising one of Africa's largest energy projects near Palma. At the same time a debt scandal of secret state-guaranteed loans, exposed in 2016, crashed the currency and cut off donor budget support.

In October 2017 armed men attacked police stations in Mocímboa da Praia. The insurgency, known locally as al-Shabaab and linked to Islamic State, fed on grievances over poverty, land and exclusion in a Muslim-majority region. The 2021 attack on Palma forced TotalEnergies to suspend its gas project. Rwandan and SADC troops pushed insurgents back from towns, but attacks continue in Cabo Delgado and have spread into Niassa and parts of Nampula; about a million people have been displaced at the peak.

Climate hits the coast hard. Cyclone Idai flattened much of Beira in 2019, Kenneth struck the north weeks later, and Freddy in 2023 crossed the channel twice. Floods, cholera and rebuilding are part of the story visitors see in the centre, and the reason travel plans for January to March need flexibility.

Mozambique has about 35 million people and more than 40 languages. Emakhuwa, spoken by the Makhuwa in the north, is the largest; Xichangana and Xirhonga dominate around Maputo, Cisena and Echuwabo in the centre. Portuguese is the language of school, state and cities, and a growing share of young urban people speak it as their first language.

Around 60 per cent are Christian and about a fifth Muslim, with ancestor veneration and traditional healers woven through both. The Makonde of the far north are known for their blackwood sculpture and their mapiko masked dances; the Chopi of Inhambane play the timbila, a xylophone orchestra recognised by UNESCO.

Marrabenta, the dance music born in the suburbs of colonial Lourenço Marques in the mid-20th century, mixes local rhythms with Portuguese guitar. Maputo's live-music bars, contemporary art led by painters such as Malangatana, and the writer Mia Couto make the capital the country's cultural centre.

Mozambique's kitchen is a meeting of African staples, Portuguese technique and Indian Ocean spice. Maize xima and cassava leaves (matapa) sit beside Portuguese bread rolls, custard tarts and garlic-and-wine marinades; the north coast adds curries and samosas from Swahili and Indian traders.

Piri-piri, the small fiery chilli, gave the world a sauce and a way of grilling chicken; Mozambican prawns — large, sweet and grilled with garlic and lemon — were long a major export, and Maputo's fish market sells them to cook on the spot. Cashews, once the world's biggest cashew crop, are still roasted by roadside sellers.

Much coastal life follows the sea: dhows built by hand in Vilankulo and Inhambane still sail under triangular sails, fishers net at dawn, and coconut palms planted in colonial times line the Inhambane shore. Warm water and plankton draw whale sharks and manta rays, which now support dive tourism around Tofo.