Mozambique
In Mozambique the most important amongst the numerous ethnis groups are the Makua-Lomwe who account for about 40% of the population, they belong to the Bantu tribe, the Thonga the Chopi, the tonga Shona and the Makonde. There are also some Europeans.The official working language is Portuguese but the main spoken languages are the Makua-Lomwewhich has different tribal versions and the Swahili which is soken on the coast of Mozambique.There is a extreme diversity when it comes to religious belief, 41% are Animist, 32% are Christians, 25% are muslims.
According to statistics Mozambique has a population of 17,25 million people.Maputo is the capital of the country but Nampula, Beira, Quelimane, Xai Xai, Inhambane and Tete are also important cities.Joaquim Chissano is the head of the State.There has a multi- party system since 30 November 1990. The currency are the Meticais. Mozambique was a mercantile empire that use to make is profit from the exportation of gold, ivory and slaves.Because it always had trading relantionship with various countries and had its own trading system Portugal was able to colonise only unenvenly. This was done in several ways.The prazos or privately owned agricultural estates which date from 17th century, especially in the Zambezi valley, were obtained by conquest or by grant from African chiefs or the Portuguese crown. In the 1890s a different form of colonialism was introduced when the Portugal granted three foreign charter companies territorial concessions over large amount of land in the north, these companies had no right s to economic exploitation within these lands however they were virtualy foreign company governments. With the installation of the Salazar's New State in the 19030s an attempt was made to seal the colonies off from non-Portuguese investment and to operate a protectionist policy to tie the colonies and their trade more closely to the coloniser. However with the outbreak of the liberation wars in the 1960s, Portugal was compelled to lean on its international allies. The economy of Colonial Mozambique was therefore subject to the dictates of Portugal and its allies. Furthermore as its home economy was put in risk by the challenge of liberation wars, Portugal ceded ground more and more to its allies but especially to South Africa which overtook Portugal as the main source of the Mozambique's imports and which transformed Mozambiques's labour, her ports and harbours into the need of the South African economy to the point that about two thirds of Mozambique foreign currency earnings came for south Africa. Most this money was from the sale of labour to South Africa's mining industry.
In the period between the second world war and the 1970s, Portugal introducted several setllement schemes, in the rice growing limpopo Valley inducements were offered to small-scale immigrant farmers. However the hope to enlarge the settler population, which was in response to the growth of the liberation struggle, was cut by the advances of Frelimo, the Mozambican Liberation Front. Frelimo was formed in 1962 as by a group of exiled political groupings, radical intellectuals and began as underground organisation inside the country. It launched its first military campaigns two years after and by 1966 it had driven the Portuguese army out of the part of the two nothern provinces of Cabo delgado and Niassa.In the beginning the movements's objective was broadly the elimination of colonialism, but in the course of administering its liberated base areas, the movement developed an internal conflict which led to the assassination in 1968 of the first Frelimo president and to the ejection of a group within the leadership advocating narrow nationalism. Frelimo's goals were redefined to include both national independence and a end to exploitation of man by man.By the time that the Portuguese government was overthrown in 1974 by an army unable to win the colonial wars, Frelimo had a wealth of accumulated experience in warfare. The organisation soon transformed itself from national liberation movement into a Marxist party with a programme for the building of Mozambican socialism. The country is know independente. However its economy still suffers from the legacy of exploitation. Recent events shows that there still a lot to be done for the stability of Mozambique.