50 free Mozambique trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 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 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the capital and largest city of Mozambique?
Maputo
It was renamed in 1976, a year after independence.
Q 02Mozambique's coastline lies on which ocean?
The Indian
The Mozambique Channel separates it from Madagascar and the Comoros.
Q 03Which European power colonised Mozambique for over four centuries?
Portugal
Independence came in 1975.
Q 04Whose 1498 voyage marked the arrival of Europeans in Mozambique?
Vasco da Gama
Gradual colonisation and settlement began in 1505.
Q 05Mozambique is named after what?
A coral island off the northern coast
The name is thought to come from Mussa Bin Bique, an Arab trader who lived on the island.
Q 06The Island of Mozambique was the colonial capital until 1898, when the capital moved south to which city?
Lourenço Marques
That city is now the national capital under a new name.
Q 07The Chapel of Nossa Senhora de Baluarte on the Island of Mozambique, built in 1522, is considered what?
The oldest European building in the Southern Hemisphere
The island is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Q 08What is the only official language of Mozambique?
Portuguese
Local languages include Tsonga, Makhuwa, Sena, Chichewa and Swahili.
Q 09On what date did Mozambique become independent?
25 June 1975
Most of the 250,000 colonists left within a year.
Q 10Which liberation movement began a guerrilla war against colonial rule in 1964 and has governed since independence?
FRELIMO
Its founder Eduardo Mondlane was killed by a parcel bomb in 1969.
Q 11Which event in Lisbon in April 1974 hastened Mozambique's independence?
The Carnation Revolution
The fall of the Estado Novo ended Lisbon's colonial wars.
Q 12Who was Mozambique's first president?
Samora Machel
He set up a one-party Marxist state.
Q 13How did Mozambique's first president die in October 1986?
A plane crash inside South Africa
His Tupolev crashed into a hillside at Mbuzini on the way home from a summit in Zambia.
Q 21Besides the rifle, which two objects appear on the Mozambican flag?
A hoe and an open book
The design was adopted on 1 May 1983 and is written into the constitution.
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
Lisbon owned 82 percent of it until 2007.
Which great lake, shared with Malawi, forms part of Mozambique's northwestern border?
Q 14Graça Machel, widow of the first president, later married which world leader?
Nelson Mandela
She became the only woman to have been first lady of two countries.
Q 15Which rebel movement fought the government in the civil war of 1977 to 1992?
RENAMO
It was backed by Rhodesia and later by the apartheid regime to the south.
Q 16Roughly how many Mozambicans died in the civil war?
1,000,000
A further 1.7 million fled to neighbouring countries.
Q 17The civil war ended in October 1992 with peace accords signed in which city?
Rome
The Catholic Community of Sant'Egidio brokered the deal.
Q 18Which president succeeded Machel and steered Mozambique from Marxism to capitalism and peace?
Joaquim Chissano
He won the first multiparty elections in 1994.
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
It sits on a red triangle with a gold star; since 1990 there have been calls to remove it.
Niassa
Mozambique's other notable lakes are Chiuta, Cahora Bassa and Shirwa.
Q 25How many provinces does Mozambique have?
Ten
The capital city has provincial status on top of them, and the provinces contain 129 districts.
Q 26What is the currency of Mozambique?
Metical
In October 2023 a US dollar bought about 64 of them.
Q 27Which two cyclones struck Mozambique in 2019, the first time two had hit in one season?
Idai and Kenneth
They caused devastating floods.
Q 28Huge offshore reserves of which resource were discovered in the Rovuma Basin in 2010-11?
Natural gas
The finds could make Mozambique one of the world's largest LNG producers.
Q 29In 2017, an Islamist insurgency broke out in which northern province of Mozambique?
Cabo Delgado
It has threatened multi-billion-dollar LNG projects on the Afungi peninsula.
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.