A bitter insurgency in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province has left 4,000 people dead and more than a million people displaced over the past five years. The area is home to untapped gas reserves worth billions of dollars – an opportunity local politicians and multinational corporations are desperate to exploit. The Mozambicans who first took up arms were driven by perceptions that they were excluded from such opportunities and broader national development. Foreign marauding militants and national armies have since joined the theatre of war.
A child plays in front of an old, almost destroyed tent in Marrupa camp which, according to the International Organisation for Migration, has some 750 households with about 2,250 displaced people.
Abel Valente Pakalamuka Nambili was displaced from Macomia in Cabo Delgado. He now lives in the Marocane resettlement village in Chiúre District, nearly 200km away from home.
Residents of Meculane camp return home across the fields. According to the International Organisation for Migration, the 128-acre camp has about 950 households, an average of seven households per acre.
Amissi Amissi, a former fisherman from the north, forced to flee with his 11 children, now lives in Marocane resettlement village camp. Away from the sea, he has had to learn to farm to survive.
Children play with kites in a field in Chuire district’s Meculane.
Climate change makes bad things worse: a flooded school in the provincial capital Pemba.
