Ilha de Moçambique, Pemba & the North

The northern coast was part of the Swahili world for centuries before Europeans arrived. Muslim trading towns such as the one on Mozambique Island traded gold and slaves with Arabia, Persia and India, while the interior was home to the Makhuwa, Yao, Makonde and other farming peoples. Vasco da Gama reached the Island of Mozambique in 1498, and the Portuguese made it their base, building the Fortress of São Sebastião in the sixteenth century and governing Portuguese East Africa from the island until the capital moved to Lourenço Marques in 1898.

In the nineteenth century the north was a centre of the slave trade to the Indian Ocean islands and the Americas, and Yao chiefs grew powerful on it. Colonial control of the interior came late; in Niassa and Cabo Delgado it was long left to the chartered Niassa Company. In June 1960 Portuguese forces fired on a gathering at Mueda on the Makonde plateau, and in 1964 FRELIMO began its armed struggle in the north, where the Makonde provided many of its fighters.

The north was also touched by the 1977–92 civil war between the government and Renamo. Since the 2010s the discovery of offshore gas in the Rovuma basin and of rubies near Montepuez has brought investment to Cabo Delgado, while poverty and grievances deepened. In October 2017 an armed group, known locally as al-Shabaab, attacked Mocímboa da Praia; the Islamic State has claimed attacks there since 2019. The conflict has since displaced hundreds of thousands of people, halted the main gas project after an attack on Palma in 2021, and drawn in troops from Rwanda and a southern African regional force.

The Makhuwa are the largest group in the north and in Mozambique, and Emakhuwa is spoken across Nampula and much of Niassa and Cabo Delgado. On the coast the Swahili heritage remains strong: Islam is the main faith of many coastal and lakeshore communities, the Mwani of Ibo and the Cabo Delgado coast speak a language close to Swahili, and mosques stand beside Catholic churches in the towns. The Yao and Nyanja live around Lichinga and the lakeshore.

On the Island of Mozambique and the Nampula coast, women dance tufo, a dance with songs and frame drums performed at Islamic festivals. The Makonde of the Mueda plateau are famous for carving in dark hardwood, from mapiko masks to spirit figures, and for the masked mapiko dance.

Matrilineal traditions persist among the Makonde, with land and lineage often passing through the mother's family, and initiation rites mark the move to adulthood.

About ten million people live in the three northern provinces, with Nampula the country's most populous province. Nampula city, with about 750,000 people, is the north's commercial centre; Nacala has a deepwater port; Pemba, capital of Cabo Delgado, has taken in people displaced by the conflict; and Lichinga, Cuamba, Montepuez and Angoche are other important towns.

Most families farm cassava, maize, beans and cashews, and Nampula is Mozambique's leading cashew-growing province. Cotton and tobacco are cash crops, fishing supports the coast and the lake, and the Nacala corridor carries coal from Tete to the port. In Cabo Delgado, gas and ruby mining promise wealth that most local people have yet to see.

Days begin before dawn with prayers in the coastal towns and early markets. For many families in Cabo Delgado, daily life is still shaped by displacement, camps and uncertainty about going home, while across the north poor roads and patchy electricity are constant problems.

Northern food carries the Indian Ocean in it: rice and coconut are as important as maize on the coast, and many dishes are spiced. Seafood curries of prawns and fish cooked in coconut milk are coastal favourites, and matapa, cassava leaves stewed with ground peanuts, onions and tomatoes, is eaten throughout. Inland, meals centre on xima, stiff maize or cassava porridge, with beans, leaves or dried fish.

Indian and Swahili influence shows in chamuças, triangular fried pastries filled with spiced meat or vegetables, and in curries. Cashew nuts are a common ingredient, and fish from Lake Niassa and the sea supply much of the protein.

Bottled lager and home-brewed drinks serve for celebrations.

The Island of Mozambique, off the Nampula coast, is the north's great sight: a UNESCO World Heritage Site of two towns — the stone town of churches, palaces and merchants' houses, and the Makuti quarter of reed-roofed houses. The Fortress of São Sebastião guards the northern tip, with the Chapel of Nossa Senhora do Baluarte, often called the oldest European building in the southern hemisphere, and the Palace of São Paulo, once the governor's residence, is now a museum. Nampula, inland, has a cathedral and a national ethnography museum covering the peoples of the north.

In Cabo Delgado, Pemba sits on a wide natural bay, and the Quirimbas archipelago stretches north along the coast, with Ibo's fort, colonial houses and silversmiths, and coral reefs and mangroves protected in Quirimbas National Park; the insurgency has taken the province off the tourist map.

Inland, the Niassa Special Reserve, stretching to the Rovuma river on the Tanzanian border, is Mozambique's largest protected area, with elephants, lions, African wild dogs and sable antelope in vast miombo woodland. On Lake Niassa's shore, the Mozambican side of Lake Malawi, fishing villages, clear water and a lake reserve lie around Metangula and Cóbuè, below the cool Lichinga plateau.