Maputo, the capital of East Africa’s Mozambique, is an Indian Ocean port with preserved Portuguese colonial architecture. Many turn-of-the-century buildings are in the downtown jacaranda-lined Baixa neighborhood. The bronze-domed CFM Maputo Railway Station, for example, was completed in 1916. The Baixa also has an expansive Municipal Market. The neoclassical City Hall is in the nearby Praça da Independência square. The Geography of Mozambique apprises a vast, low, grassland plateau that rises from the coast towards the mountains in the north and west covers nearly half the country’s land area. The population is concentrated along the coast and the fertile river valleys. The Zambezi is the largest of the country’s 25 rivers.
Historical, Cultural facts & Religion
The history of Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, traces its origins back over 500 years when a fishing village developed on Maputo Bay on the site where the modern city of Maputo now stands. The first Europeans to discover the bay were Portuguese navigators led by António de Campo in 1502.Culture. Maputo is a melting pot of several cultures. The Bantu and Portuguese cultures dominate, but the influence of Arab, Indian, and Chinese cultures is also felt. Religions: Roman Catholic 27.2%, Muslim 18.9%, Zionist Christian 15.6%, Evangelical/Pentecostal 15.3%, Anglican 1.7%, other 4.8%, none 13.9%, unspecified 2.5% (2017 est.)
Brief City History
Long before Europeans discovered Maputo’s charms, the local Ronga people were living here, fishing, whale hunting, farming and trading. In 1545, Portuguese navigator Lourenço Marques happened upon Delagoa Bay (now Maputo Bay) in his journey up the Southern African coastline. His reports attracted other traders, who established temporary settlements offshore on Inhaca and Xefina Grande islands as bases for ivory-trading forays to the mainland. Yet Portuguese attention to the area was fleeting: they soon turned their sights north, all but abandoning their activities in the south. Lourenço Marques – as the area later became known – took on a new importance in the mid-19th century, with the discovery of diamonds and gold in the nearby Transvaal Republic. Around 1898 it replaced Mozambique Island as the capital of Portuguese East Africa. A new rail link with the Transvaal, built-in 1894, and the expansion of the port fuelled the city’s growth. In the 1950s and 1960s ‘LM’ became a favored playground for Portuguese holidaymakers and apartheid-era South Africans, who came over the border in droves seeking prawns, prostitutes and beaches. With Mozambican independence in 1975, the city’s original residents reasserted themselves and in 1976 President Samora Machel changed the city’s name to Maputo, honouring an early chief who had resisted Portuguese colonization.
Language (s) Written & Spoken
Portuguese is the official language of Mozambique. Maputo, Mozambique. Mozambique is a multilingual State with numerous Bantu languages spoken along with Portuguese. Ethnologue identifies a total of 43 languages used across Mozambique.
Important Types of Commerce in Maputo
Major industries in Mozambique include food, beverages, chemicals (fertilizer, soap, paints), petroleum products, textiles, cement, glass, asbestos, and tobacco. Virtually all manufacturing is located in the major urban areas of Maputo, Beira, and Nampula.
Language Services US and others will provide working with Maputo
Portuguese language service is important to consider when doing business in Maputo as it is the major language used in the country. Individuals or companies in various sector such as Legal, Machinery and technologies, Business, Finance, Medicine, Advertising, communications, PR, Transport, Computer hardware and software, Science, Agriculture, Automotive, European Union Documents, Legal, Government, Industrial, Life Science, Retail, and Technology would require to indulge in professional translation to adapt documents expertly to and from Maputo.
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