Quelimane

Quelimane stands on the Rio dos Bons Sinais, a waterway near the coast of central Mozambique. Its position made it an outlet for the products of the Zambezi valley, connecting inland settlements with ships on the Indian Ocean. The surrounding lowlands are crossed by streams and wetlands, and the town grew where river transport met the sea routes of the coast.

The Portuguese established a trading centre here in the sixteenth century. By the seventeenth century Quelimane had become an important gateway to the Zambezi, and merchants travelled upriver towards Tete. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries it also became a major port in the trade in enslaved people, who were carried away across the Indian and Atlantic oceans.