Mozambique

Mozambique faces Madagascar across the Mozambique Channel, along a coast of mangroves, dunes and coral reefs, with dugongs grazing the seagrass around the Bazaruto islands. The Zambezi divides north from south, held back at Cahora Bassa by a dam, while the Limpopo waters the south and the Rovuma marks the northern frontier. Inland, the coastal plain climbs to plateaus and to the mountains of Gorongosa and Manica. Indian Ocean cyclones strike in the hot, wet season.

Swahili towns along this coast traded gold from the interior a thousand years ago, through ports such as Sofala. Vasco da Gama put in at the Island of Mozambique in 1498, and the island, which lent the country its name, was the seat of Portuguese rule until 1898. Portugal defeated Ngungunhane of the Gaza kingdom in 1895. Independence came in June 1975 after a war led by FRELIMO; a civil war then lasted until a peace accord was signed in Rome in 1992.

Chopi musicians play the timbila, a wooden xylophone, in orchestras of dozens, and Makonde carvers work dark hardwood into figures. Mia Couto and Paulina Chiziane have both won the Camões Prize, and Eusébio, born in Lourenço Marques, became a legend of Portuguese football. Meals centre on xima, a maize porridge, or matapa, cassava leaves stewed with peanuts and coconut. Beira and Nacala carry trade for landlocked neighbours, and exports run from aluminium and Tete coal to cashews, prawns and rubies.