Cabo Delgado Province

Based on Wikipedia: Cabo Delgado Province

A Province of Buried Treasure and Buried Bodies

Beneath the waters off Mozambique's northern coast lies one of the largest natural gas deposits ever discovered in Africa—enough fuel to power millions of homes for decades. And yet the people who live above this treasure have fled by the hundreds of thousands, chased from their villages by militants who behead children.

This is Cabo Delgado, a province whose name means "thin cape" in Portuguese, a sliver of land that contains both extraordinary wealth and extraordinary suffering. Understanding what's happening here requires understanding a place where ancient trade routes meet modern energy politics, where religious divisions have festered for centuries, and where the promises of development have collided with the reality of insurgency.

Geography at the Edge of Everything

Cabo Delgado occupies Mozambique's northeastern corner, pressing against Tanzania to the north. At roughly 82,600 square kilometers, it's about the size of Austria. The province takes its name from Cape Delgado, the headland that marks Mozambique's northernmost point where the country meets Tanzania at the Indian Ocean.

The landscape tells a story of contrasts. Along the coast, tropical waters lap against beaches and small islands. The Quirimbas Archipelago, a chain of coral islands, dots the shoreline. Inland, the terrain rises toward the Mueda Plateau, a highland region that would later prove strategically crucial in Mozambique's fight for independence.

About 2.3 million people live here, according to the 2017 census. The capital is Pemba, a port city of roughly 140,000 people that has become a refuge for those fleeing violence in the countryside. Other significant towns include Montepuez, known for its ruby deposits, and Mocímboa da Praia, a coastal town that would become infamous for very different reasons.

The People of the Plateau and the Coast

Three main ethnic groups call Cabo Delgado home, and their distribution reveals much about the province's fault lines.

The Makonde people dominate the inland plateau that shares their name. They're famous throughout Africa for their intricate wood carvings—stylized human figures with elongated forms that have influenced modern art worldwide. Picasso collected them. The Makonde are predominantly Christian, specifically Catholic, and their highland territory became a stronghold of the independence movement.

The Makua, or more precisely the Makhuwa, form the largest ethnic group in the broader region. Their language is the most widely spoken in the province, with about 67 percent of residents speaking it natively. The Makhuwa occupy the central strip of Cabo Delgado and are religiously mixed—some Catholic, some Muslim.

Then there are the Mwani, a coastal people whose name means "people of the shore." They speak a dialect closely related to Swahili, that great lingua franca of East African trade. The Mwani are overwhelmingly Muslim, and their communities stretch along the northeastern coast.

This religious geography matters enormously. While Mozambique as a whole is majority Christian, two northern provinces buck that trend. In Cabo Delgado, about 54 percent of the population is Muslim. But the distribution is uneven: the coastal districts are often more than 90 percent Muslim, while the Makonde plateau remains solidly Catholic. Only three districts have Catholic majorities.

Centuries of Trade, Centuries of Faith

The Islamic presence along this coast predates the arrival of Europeans by centuries. Arab and Swahili traders sailed these waters as part of the Indian Ocean trading network, exchanging goods from as far as China and India. They brought Islam with them, and it took root among the coastal communities.

When the Portuguese arrived in the late fifteenth century, they found established trading posts and Muslim communities already thriving. Portuguese colonial rule, which would last nearly five centuries, imposed Catholicism but never fully displaced Islam from the coast. The result was a religious layering: Catholic missions concentrated inland, Muslim communities persisted along the shore.

This history explains why the linguistic map of Cabo Delgado is so complex. Portuguese, the colonial language, is spoken natively by only about 6 percent of the population. Makhuwa dominates at 67 percent. Makonde accounts for about 3 percent, while Mwani and Swahili together represent about 6.5 percent. A striking 16 percent of the population was listed as speaking an "unknown" language in the 2007 census—a reminder of how poorly documented parts of this province remain.

The War for Independence Starts Here

On September 25, 1964, a small group of guerrillas crossed from Tanzania into Cabo Delgado Province. They attacked a Portuguese administrative post in a raid that was more symbolic than strategic. But that date—now a national holiday in Mozambique—marked the beginning of the Mozambican War of Independence.

The attackers belonged to FRELIMO, the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique. Founded just two years earlier, FRELIMO would wage a decade-long guerrilla campaign against Portuguese colonial rule. They chose Cabo Delgado as their starting point deliberately. The province bordered Tanzania, a friendly nation that provided sanctuary and support. The Mueda Plateau offered difficult terrain for conventional military operations. And the Makonde people, still bitter about a 1960 massacre when Portuguese troops opened fire on peaceful protesters in Mueda, proved receptive to the independence cause.

The Portuguese responded with a major military operation in 1970 called Operation Gordian Knot, named after the legendary knot that Alexander the Great solved by slicing through it with his sword. The Portuguese military hoped to achieve a similarly decisive result by destroying FRELIMO's bases in Cabo Delgado.

They failed. Despite deploying thousands of troops and conducting hundreds of operations, the Portuguese couldn't eliminate the guerrilla presence. The operation actually ended up proving that Portugal couldn't win the war militarily, contributing to the war-weariness that would eventually lead to the 1974 revolution in Lisbon and the subsequent independence of all Portuguese colonies.

Mozambique became independent in 1975. FRELIMO, transformed from guerrilla movement to ruling party, has governed ever since. But the province that launched the revolution would not remain peaceful.

The New Insurgency

In October 2017, armed men attacked three police stations in the town of Mocímboa da Praia. They were young, local, and Muslim. They called themselves al-Shabaab, though they had no known connection to the Somali militant group of the same name. The international press would eventually settle on calling them the Islamic State in Mozambique, or locally, al-Shabaab Mozambique.

The roots of this insurgency are still debated. Some analysts point to economic marginalization—Cabo Delgado remains one of Mozambique's poorest provinces despite its natural resources. Others emphasize religious radicalization, noting that foreign preachers had been active in the region. Still others highlight the alienation of young people who saw few opportunities while watching foreign companies prepare to extract billions of dollars worth of gas from their shores.

Whatever the causes, the violence escalated with terrifying speed. The militants targeted villages, government installations, and infrastructure. Their methods were deliberately brutal—mass beheadings became a signature tactic, designed to terrorize populations into submission or flight.

By August 2020, the insurgents had captured Mocímboa da Praia, the same coastal town where the conflict began. They held it for a year, using it as a base of operations. In September 2020, they seized Vamizi Island, one of the Quirimbas. In April and November of that same year, over fifty people were beheaded in separate incidents.

The worst single attack came in March 2021, when militants overran the town of Palma, near the gas development sites. They murdered dozens of civilians. More than 35,000 of the town's 75,000 residents fled, many making their way to Pemba. The international NGO Save the Children reported that militants were beheading children as young as eleven years old.

The Connection to Islamic State—and the Limits of That Connection

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, better known as ISIS or ISIL, has claimed the Mozambique militants as an affiliate. The group appears in ISIS propaganda, and the militants themselves have adopted ISIS symbols and rhetoric.

But the relationship is more complicated than that suggests. The International Crisis Group, an organization that monitors conflicts worldwide, reported in March 2021 that while ISIS has had contact with the Mozambique militants and provided some financial assistance, ISIS likely does not exercise command and control over the group. This is a local insurgency with local grievances that has adopted the ISIS brand, not a franchise operation directed from abroad.

This distinction matters for understanding how to address the conflict. An insurgency driven primarily by international jihadist ideology requires different solutions than one rooted in local marginalization and historical grievances. The truth appears to be some combination of both.

The International Response

Mozambique's own military struggled to contain the insurgency. The Mozambique Defence Armed Forces, despite years of effort, proved unable to protect civilians or retake territory. This led the government to seek outside help.

In July 2021, the Southern African Development Community, a regional bloc of sixteen southern African nations, deployed a military mission to Cabo Delgado. Troops from Rwanda also arrived, sent under a bilateral agreement. These foreign forces helped recapture Mocímboa da Praia and pushed the militants back from some of their gains.

But the insurgency has not been defeated. As of early 2022, civilians were still being killed, and authorities were still discovering insurgent camps. The violence has displaced hundreds of thousands of people, creating a humanitarian crisis on top of the security crisis.

The Gas Beneath the Chaos

Here is the cruel irony of Cabo Delgado: the province sits atop staggering natural gas wealth that was supposed to transform Mozambique into one of Africa's major energy exporters.

In 2010, exploration in the offshore Rovuma Basin revealed enormous reserves. Area 4, one of the concession blocks, was found to contain 85 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. To put that in perspective, that's equivalent in energy terms to a 12 billion barrel oil field—enough to make Mozambique a major player in the global liquefied natural gas market.

Three major energy companies partnered to develop these reserves. ExxonMobil and Eni, the Italian oil giant, each took 40 percent stakes, with China National Petroleum Corporation holding the remaining 20 percent. Separately, the French company TotalEnergies moved to develop Area 1, another massive deposit.

The plan was to build facilities on the Afungi peninsula to liquefy the gas for export. Liquefied natural gas, or LNG, is natural gas cooled to minus 162 degrees Celsius, at which point it becomes a liquid that can be loaded onto specialized tanker ships. It's how natural gas moves across oceans.

These projects promised billions of dollars in investment, thousands of jobs, and royalties that could fund development across Mozambique. The environmental impact assessment for the Rovuma LNG project was approved in 2014, and the government gave final approval in 2019.

Then everything went wrong.

First came the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted construction, scattered workers, and crashed global LNG demand as economies locked down. The companies delayed their final investment decisions.

Then came the insurgency's escalation. When militants attacked Palma in March 2021, the violence occurred just miles from the TotalEnergies development site. Workers were evacuated. Some were killed. Both ExxonMobil and TotalEnergies declared force majeure—a legal term meaning that extraordinary circumstances beyond their control prevented them from fulfilling their contractual obligations.

TotalEnergies suspended operations. The gas remained in the ground. Mozambique's dreams of energy wealth were indefinitely postponed.

In March 2025, TotalEnergies announced it was suspending operations again, this time because financing remained unclear. Less than two weeks later, the Trump administration promised a $4.7 billion loan through the U.S. Export-Import Bank. Whether that financing will materialize, and whether the security situation will permit construction to resume, remains uncertain.

Other Resources, Similar Problems

Natural gas isn't Cabo Delgado's only valuable resource. The province also contains significant deposits of graphite, the mineral used in batteries, pencils, and increasingly in electric vehicles. An Australian company called Syrah Resources opened the Balama mine in 2019, producing high-grade graphite for export.

But even this success story comes with complications. As of 2025, farmers displaced to make way for the mine still had unresolved grievances about their resettlement. Questions persist about whether the mine has actually improved living conditions for local residents or whether the benefits have flowed primarily to foreign shareholders and the national government.

The province also holds deposits of rare earth elements and vanadium, both increasingly important for high-technology applications. Whether these resources will prove a blessing or a curse for Cabo Delgado's people depends on how the wealth is distributed and whether the security situation stabilizes.

The View from the Vatican

When Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican's Secretary of State and essentially its prime minister, visited Cabo Delgado, he was visiting one of the most dangerous places in the world for Christians. The insurgents have specifically targeted Christian communities, particularly the Makonde Catholics of the interior plateau.

But the religious dynamics are complex. This is not simply a conflict between Muslims and Christians. Many of the insurgency's victims are Muslim. Many of Mozambique's Muslim leaders have condemned the violence. The militants seem to target anyone—Muslim or Christian—who doesn't submit to their authority.

What the Vatican visit signals is that the international community, including institutions that don't typically involve themselves in security matters, has recognized Cabo Delgado as a crisis requiring attention. The province that was once forgotten in Mozambique's far north has become a focal point of global concern.

The Districts in Detail

Cabo Delgado is divided into sixteen districts, each with its own character. The largest is Montepuez, covering nearly 16,000 square kilometers with about 186,000 people—an area bigger than Connecticut with a population density that speaks to how rural and underdeveloped much of the province remains.

The smallest district is Ibo, just 48 square kilometers containing fewer than 10,000 people. Ibo is actually an island, part of the Quirimbas Archipelago, and its small size reflects its geography. Once an important Portuguese trading post, Ibo has become a focus of heritage tourism—when security permits.

Some districts have been devastated by the insurgency. Palma District, which includes the town overrun in 2021, saw most of its nearly 50,000 residents displaced. Mocímboa da Praia District, site of the first attacks and later a militant stronghold, has similarly suffered. Macomia and Quissanga districts have also been heavily affected.

Other districts, particularly in the south and on the Makonde plateau, have been relatively spared. But "relatively" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. The entire province lives under the shadow of violence, and the displaced populations have strained resources throughout the region.

What Comes Next

Cabo Delgado's future depends on several interrelated factors. Security is the most immediate: until the insurgency is contained, development projects will remain frozen and displaced populations cannot return home. But security alone isn't sufficient. The underlying grievances that fueled the insurgency—poverty, marginalization, the sense that resource wealth benefits outsiders while locals remain poor—must also be addressed.

The gas projects, if they eventually proceed, could provide the revenue for that development. But Mozambique has a poor track record of translating resource wealth into broad-based prosperity. The country's recent history includes a hidden debt scandal in which officials secretly borrowed billions of dollars, much of which disappeared into corruption. Trust in the government's ability to manage resource revenues wisely is limited.

For now, Cabo Delgado remains a province of potential—enormous natural wealth beneath its waters, strategic importance at the junction of East and Southern Africa, and a population that has survived colonialism, civil war, and now insurgency. Whether that potential will ever be realized, and for whose benefit, are questions that will shape not just this province but Mozambique's future as a nation.

The thin cape points north toward Tanzania, toward the rest of Africa, toward possibilities still unrealized. Beneath the waves, the gas waits. Above them, the people wait too.