Mozambique has made use of the misfortunes of history. A strategic challenge situated on the road to the East Indies, coveted from too early on, it became a Portuguese possession, but served as a service colony for the British hinterland. Portuguese colonisation, not very extravagant with frugally assessed resources, did not allow it to free up new African elites, which could have taken over. Independence was granted from outside by a revolution in the mother country without a following process of decolonisation. Failure to achieve democratisation provoked a civil war that destroyed most of the facilities the colonial power had had some trouble installing. Mozambique, which has always been a passageway between the interior and the ocean, can do little but accept its original geographical vocation as a staging country.

Bibliography:
D. Jouanneau, Le Mozambique, Ed Karthala, Paris, 1995
M. Cahen, Mozambique, la révolution implosée , Ed L’harmattan, 1987
J.P Chrétien, L’Afrique des grands lacs , Ed Flammarion, 2003