Makua

The Makua are Bantu-speaking peoples of northern Mozambique, north of the Zambezi. Their oral traditions place their ancestral home at Mount Namuli, and Portuguese visitors described their trade and skills in the early 1500s.

Makua communities worked iron and exchanged food and metal goods for textiles and salt. From 1749 they fought a prolonged struggle against coastal rulers, the Portuguese and other groups involved in the slave trade.