Mozambique

A long coastline of Swahili trading towns that became a Portuguese colony and then a laboratory for other people's wars. Sofala and Ilha de Mocambique were part of the Indian Ocean gold and ivory trade before Vasco da Gama arrived in 1498, and Portugal held coastal enclaves for centuries while leasing much of the interior to chartered companies into the 1940s. Forced cotton cultivation and labour recruitment for South African mines defined the colonial economy. FRELIMO's war from 1964 contributed to the collapse of the Portuguese dictatorship, and independence came in June 1975. What followed was worse than the liberation war: Rhodesia and then apartheid South Africa created and armed RENAMO to destabilise a government supporting their own liberation movements, and the civil war to 1992 killed around a million people, mostly through famine and the destruction of clinics and schools. A church-mediated peace held. The country is among the most exposed to cyclones and flooding anywhere. Large offshore gas finds in the north have coincided with an Islamist insurgency in Cabo Delgado since 2017. Maputo is the capital. Mozambique joined the Commonwealth in 1995 without ever having been British, the first country to do so. The country has about thirty-four million people and a coastline of some two and a half thousand kilometres. Portuguese is official and is a first language for a minority. Ilha de Mocambique is a World Heritage site and gave the country its name. The flag carries a Kalashnikov, the only national flag with a modern rifle on it. Prawns and cashews were long the main exports.

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