Mozambique

Mozambique demonstrates what happens when enormous resource wealth meets fragile statehood. The country sits atop one of the world's largest natural gas reserves—but insurgency in Cabo Delgado has frozen the transformation that was supposed to change everything.

Portuguese explorers reached Mozambique Island in 1498, seeking the gold trade routes of the Swahili coast. Unlike other colonial powers who would arrive and depart, Portugal stayed for 470 years—among the longest colonial occupations in Africa. The colony served as a way station for the India trade, a source of slaves for Brazil, and eventually a supplier of migrant labor to South African mines. Portuguese settlers remained a tiny elite; at independence in 1975, some estimates suggest fewer than 1% of the population could read. Development concentrated in a few ports and plantations. The interior remained largely untouched by colonial infrastructure except where it served extraction—a pattern that still shapes Mozambique's geography of wealth.

The independence struggle began in 1962 when exiled groups formed FRELIMO in Tanzania, led by Eduardo Mondlane. Armed resistance started in 1964. Portugal, under the Salazar dictatorship, refused to decolonize; by the early 1970s, Portugal was spending nearly half its budget fighting colonial wars in Mozambique, Angola, and Guinea-Bissau. The 1974 Carnation Revolution in Lisbon finally ended the Estado Novo regime. Mozambique gained independence on June 25, 1975. Then came collapse. Within weeks, roughly 300,000 Portuguese settlers fled, taking most of the country's educated workforce. FRELIMO adopted Marxism-Leninism in 1977, just as Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa created RENAMO to destabilize the new state. The civil war (1977-1992) killed over one million people, displaced five million, and destroyed what infrastructure existed. The 1992 Rome Peace Accords ended the war; multiparty elections in 1994 brought gradual stabilization.

The discovery of massive offshore gas reserves in the Rovuma Basin promised transformation. TotalEnergies' $20 billion LNG project—one of the largest investments in African history—took final investment decision in 2019. Then, in 2021, Islamist insurgency in Cabo Delgado forced TotalEnergies to declare force majeure. The four-year halt added $4.5 billion to costs. In May 2025, TotalEnergies announced construction restart; Rwandan troops guard the site. The Coral South floating LNG project—safer offshore—exported 100 shipments by April 2025. ExxonMobil's separate $25 billion project awaits FID in first half 2026. Mozambique may join the world's top 10 gas producers by 2040.

By 2026, Mozambique tests whether military containment can hold long enough for the LNG phase-transition to complete. Sixty billion dollars in potential revenue over decades depends on security in one remote province. The same fragility that made RENAMO possible now makes insurgency possible—the colonial infrastructure gap never closed.