Mozambique's second city — Portuguese tiles, Indian Ocean port, and cyclone resilience
Beira is Mozambique's second largest city and the main port for landlocked Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi via the Beira Corridor. A Portuguese colonial city of wide avenues, Art Deco buildings, and famous Sofala-province piri-piri prawns, Beira was devastated by Cyclone Idai in March 2019 (the second most powerful tropical cyclone to ever hit Africa) and has been rebuilding since. The lighthouse, the colonial Cathedral, the Buzi River estuary, and the beachside Macuti Beach promenade reveal a city of resilient coastal character.
Beira was developed by the Mozambique Company (a Portuguese chartered company) from the 1890s as the ocean terminus of the railway to Rhodesia — deliberate infrastructure to give British-controlled landlocked territories access to the sea through Portuguese Mozambique. The Beira Corridor railway (1896) was one of colonial Africa's most consequential infrastructure projects. Portuguese rule ended with Mozambican independence in 1975. Cyclone Idai's 2019 devastation (90% of Beira damaged or destroyed) triggered one of Africa's largest post-disaster rebuilding programmes.