This is Mozambique
The Bantu people migrated to Mozambique about 2,000 years ago, establishing the great Mwenemutapa Empire. They developed a series of port towns and started forging numerous trading links, especially with the Arab world. The fact that Mozambique is rich in natural resources and is connected to the island of Madagascar through the Mozambique channel has given the country an important role in the maritime economy of the Indian Ocean. After the voyage of Vasco da Gama, landing there on his way to India, the Portuguese eventually set up their first trading post in 1505 to challenge Arab domination in gold export. After over four centuries of colonial rule, nationalist groups began to form and three banned groups merged as the Frelimo (Frente de Libertaçâo de Moçambique), which led to a war of attrition to win independence. In this period, Mozambique has produced some of Africa’s most important writers and artists, who even published their own newspaper “O Brado Africano”, providing a forum for intellectuals despite colonial censorship. Mozambique received its independence from the new Portuguese government in 1975 and became the People’s Republic of Mozambique. After only two years, however, the country fell into an intense and protracted civil war that lasted until 1992 and that kept the new nation from developing a stable and diversified economy. Furthermore, aspects of the traditional Mozambican culture, such as spirituality, rites of passage, or direct criticism of leadership through poetic performance, conflicted with government efforts to reorder society along socialist lines and to define a specific national culture that would not consider the great range of cultural and linguistic diversity. Since1994, when Mozambique held its first multiparty elections, the country has remained a relatively stable presidential republic.
