Mozambique Trivia
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38 free Mozambique trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Mozambique stretches 2,500 km along the Indian Ocean, from the Swahili coast towns that traded gold and ivory with Arabia and India, through four centuries of Portuguese rule, to a Marxist revolution, a civil war that killed a million people and a peace that has mostly held since 1992. It is the only country whose flag carries an assault rifle, and the first Commonwealth member never ruled by Britain. This quiz covers the geography (the Zambezi and Cahora Bassa, Lake Niassa, Monte Binga, the Bazaruto and Quirimbas islands), the history (Vasco da Gama's 1498 landfall, the prazos, the chartered companies, FRELIMO's war, independence in 1975, Samora Machel's mysterious plane crash and the Rome accords) and the modern republic of ten provinces, the metical and the Rovuma gas fields. Culture and people get their turn too: Portuguese as the sole official language, the Makhuwa and Tsonga, the coral-stone Island of Mozambique with the oldest European building in the southern hemisphere, Gorongosa's comeback, Eusébio of Benfica, novelist Mia Couto and Graça Machel, first lady of two nations. Easy questions ask which colonial power ruled; hard ones want the name of the 1992 peace accords and the neighbourhood where Eusébio was born. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Mozambique, Maputo, the flag, Samora Machel, the Island of Mozambique, Gorongosa, Eusébio, Mia Couto and Cahora Bassa, and each question carries the sentence that supports it.
30 of 38 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the capital and largest city of Mozambique?
Maputo
Maputo took its present name after independence, replacing the colonial name the city had carried since Portuguese rule.
Q 02Mozambique's coastline lies on which ocean?
The Indian
The Indian Ocean coast drew Arab merchants, who ran trading posts here for centuries before European ships arrived.
Q 03Which European power colonised Mozambique for over four centuries?
Portugal
Portugal even handed large parts of the colony to private chartered companies to run in the late 19th century.
Q 04Whose 1498 voyage marked the arrival of Europeans in Mozambique?
Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama landed at an island harbour long used by Arab traders, and within a decade a fortress had been built there.
Q 05The Mozambique Channel separates Mozambique from which island country?
Madagascar
Madagascar: coelacanths, fish thought extinct until one was caught in 1938, live in nearby waters off the Comoros.
Q 06The colonial capital moved from the Island of Mozambique south to which city?
Lourenço Marques
Lourenço Marques took over as capital after the opening of the Suez Canal sapped the island's trade.
Q 07In which neighbouring country was Mozambique's liberation movement founded in 1962?
Tanzania
Tanzania: the movement formed there two years after troops at Mueda shot protesters demanding independence, a massacre that fuelled the cause.
Q 08Sena, Lomwe and Tsonga, spoken across Mozambique, belong to which language family?
Bantu
Bantu: Bantu-speaking farmers reached the region about 2,000 years ago, bringing the skills of smelting and forging iron.
Q 09Which 1974 agreement set the terms for Mozambique's handover to independence?
Lusaka Accord
Lusaka Accord: signed in Zambia in September 1974, it set up a transitional government that ran the country until independence the next June.
Q 10Which liberation movement began a guerrilla war against colonial rule in 1964 and has governed since independence?
FRELIMO
FRELIMO was founded in exile in 1962, set up a one-party state at independence, and has held power ever since.
Q 11Which event in Lisbon in April 1974 hastened Mozambique's independence?
The Carnation Revolution
The Carnation Revolution, a 1974 military coup, brought in a government that ended the colonial war and opened independence talks.
Q 12Who was Mozambique's first president?
Samora Machel
Samora Machel had led the guerrilla army before taking power, and his government built a one-party socialist state.
Q 13How did Mozambique's first president die in October 1986?
A plane crash
A plane crash: many Mozambicans became convinced that it was sabotage rather than an accident.
Q 21From independence until 1990, Mozambique's official name began with which words?
People's Republic of
People's Republic of: the 1990 constitution dropped the name as the country moved to multiparty politics and a market economy.
Q 22Which river divides Mozambique into its two topographical regions?
The Zambezi
It is the largest and most important of the country's five main rivers.
Q 23The Cahora Bassa Dam was built mainly to supply hydroelectric power to which country?
South Africa
South Africa: a high-voltage line was built to carry the dam's power to the South African border, and Mozambique took majority control only in 2007.
Q 14The widow of Mozambique's first president later married which world leader?
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela married her on his 80th birthday in July 1998, making her first lady of a second country.
Q 15Which rebel movement fought the government in the civil war of 1977 to 1992?
RENAMO
RENAMO fought on until the 1992 peace deal, then turned itself into a political party whose leader ran for president.
Q 16Which animals, trained by the Belgian charity APOPO, helped clear Mozambique's minefields?
Rats
Rats: APOPO's giant pouched rats are too light to set off the mines, and Mozambique was declared free of known landmines in 2015.
Q 17The civil war ended in October 1992 with peace accords signed in which city?
Rome
Rome: the October 1992 accords ended 16 years of war and led to the country's first multiparty elections in 1994.
Q 18Which president led Mozambique away from Marxism to a market economy and peace?
Joaquim Chissano
Joaquim Chissano ended the civil war in 1992 and then won the country's first two multiparty elections, in 1994 and 1999.
Q 19When Mozambique joined the Commonwealth in 1995, what made it unusual?
It had never been part of the British Empire
It was the first such member; Rwanda later followed.
Q 20Which weapon appears on Mozambique's flag?
An AK-47
An AK-47 crosses a hoe over a book, standing for defence, production and study, and since 1990 some have called for the rifle's removal.
Q 24Which great lake, shared with Malawi, forms part of Mozambique's northwestern border?
Niassa
Niassa: in 2011 Mozambique declared its part of the lake a reserve and a protected Ramsar wetland.
Q 25Which neighbouring regime backed Mozambique's anti-communist rebel movement from its founding?
Rhodesia
Rhodesia: its security services set up the rebels to strike at guerrillas who fought white-minority rule from bases in Mozambique.
Q 26What is the currency of Mozambique?
Metical
Metical: the currency takes its name from the mithqal, an old Arabic unit of weight.
Q 27Which two cyclones struck Mozambique about six weeks apart in 2019?
Idai and Kenneth
Idai and Kenneth: Idai's floods around Beira were followed by a cholera outbreak there.
Q 28Huge offshore reserves of which resource were discovered in the Rovuma Basin in 2010-11?
Natural gas
Natural gas: the fields lie off the far north, where a jihadist insurgency has delayed their development.
Q 29In 2017, an Islamist insurgency broke out in which northern province of Mozambique?
Cabo Delgado
Cabo Delgado: the insurgency began with a pre-dawn raid on three police stations in the town of Mocímboa da Praia in October 2017.
Q 30Which ethnic group is the largest in northern Mozambique?
Makua
The Tsonga dominate the south and the Sena and Shona the central river valley.