Coastal city (pop., 1997: 412,588), southeastern Mozambique.
Located near the mouth of the Zambezi River , it is the chief port for central Mozambique and for landlocked Zimbabwe and Malawi. Founded in 1891 as a trading company's headquarters, it passed to Portuguese administration in 1942 and then to independent Mozambique in 1975. It is the terminus of railways from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Congo (Kinshasa), Zambia, and Malawi.