Southern Africa's Portuguese-flavoured secret — where peri peri prawns, caril de caranguejo crab curry, and café colonial architecture define a capital that rewards everyone who manages to get there
Maputo is the capital of Mozambique, a Portuguese-speaking East African country on the Indian Ocean coast — and one of the most genuinely surprising cities in Africa for anyone who makes the effort to visit. The city has a faded colonial beauty that the budget hasn't quite allowed it to shed: wide avenues lined with jacaranda trees and Art Nouveau buildings, the Polana Serena hotel (grand hotel of the Indian Ocean), and a food culture that blends Portuguese, Swahili, Indian, and Bantu traditions in ways that exist nowhere else. Prawns are the signature: Mozambique's Sofala shelf produces some…
The site of Maputo was the location of a bay called Delagoa Bay, used by Portuguese explorers from 1502. The Portuguese established a permanent trading post in 1781 to protect the slave and ivory trade routes from the interior. Mozambique became a significant Portuguese colonial territory — one of the last African countries to gain independence, achieved in 1975 after a decade of armed struggle by Frelimo (the Mozambique Liberation Front). A 15-year civil war between Frelimo and Renamo (1977–1992) left the country economically devastated; the peace agreement in 1992 began the recovery that ha…