The People
In a cultural mixture of various ethnic groups and different languages, there live about 25 million people, mostly of Bantu origin, in Mozambique.
The migration to the cities, and especially to the coastal centers, is constantly increasing and yet still about half of the Mozambican people live in inland rural areas where agriculture is the basis of their subsistence.
Just like in the rest of the country, also in the Province of Palma, in the District of Cabo Delgado, the great number of children and teens, with their beautiful smiles, gives a strong feeling that this is a country of young people which is building its own future day by day, that future which is rooted in a very recent and not painless history. An independent nation since 1975, Mozambique was in fact the scene of a long civil war that ended only in 1991. Since then the state of peace, alongside a certain political stability, has certainly been helping the process of transformation: especially in the south of the country, where new generations of technicians, high-school and university graduates, teachers, engineers and doctors emerge, one can smell renewal and confidence in the air. The north is not far behind though and – even if almost half of the population faces living conditions that do not reach the minimum needed to get out of extreme poverty – people start to be aware of the fact that the battle against illiteracy and the health education campaigns to prevent those diseases that, even today are the major cause of death in the country (malaria, tuberculosis, cholera …) represent the only way forward a better future.
