Mozambique Facts

Map is from the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection.

• Located on the east coast of Africa, on the Indian Ocean between Tanzania and South Africa, Mozambique is roughly the size of Texas.

• It is 99 percent ethnically Bantu. Portuguese remains the official language, but Swahili is widely spoken.

• Literacy Rate: 46.5%

• HIV Adult Prevalence (15-49): 12%

• TB Prevalence per 100,000: 624

• Population: 21,669,278

• Population below poverty line: 70%

• Unemployment rate: 21%

• Median Age: 17.6

• Urbanization: 37%

• Infant Mortality Rate: 105.8 per 1,000 births

• Life Expectancy: 41.8 years

• Fertility Rate: 5.18 children born/woman

• Religion: Catholic 23.8%, Muslim 17.8%, Zionist Christian 17.5%, other 17.8%, none 23.1%

• School life expectancy (primary to tertiary): 8 years

• Seventy-five percent of the population engages in small-scale agriculture.

• Crops produced include cotton, cashews, sugar cane, tea and tropical fruits.

• Poverty remains widespread in Mozambique, where more than half the population lives on less than $1 a day.

• Like most of the east coast of Africa, Mozambique was a Portuguese colonial slave-trading outpost. The country was held under Portuguese rule longer than Tanzania, its neighbor to the north, and achieved independence in 1975. Before that, Portugal had occupied the African nation for more than 400 years.

• Mozambique remains dependent upon foreign assistance for much of its annual budget, and the majority of the population remains below the poverty line. Subsistence agriculture continues to employ the vast majority of the country's work force.

* These facts and figures were taken in 2009 from the CIA Factbook and the World Health Organization site.