Lichinga

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Lichinga is the capital city of Niassa Province of Mozambique. It lies almost 1500 m above sea level on the Lichinga Plateau, east of Lake Niassa (Lake Malawi). The town has a population of 112,000 and was founded as Vila Cabral as a military settlement and is home to an airport. Owing to its high altitude location the town experiences a temperate-cold climate, with winter months as cold as 0°C and summertime rarely hotter than 32 °C. The town is surrounded by a pine tree plantation. There are a minimum estimated 450,000 Yao people living in Mozambique. They largely occupy the eastern and northern part of the Niassa province and form about 40% of the population of Lichinga, the capital of this province.

[edit] History

Founded by the Portuguese in 1931 as Vila Cabral, the town was designed to become a fast growth urban center, its streets and avenues paid attention to a projected future growth. Vila Cabral was upgraded to city status in 1962. In the early 1960s its population was 27,000 inhabitants. The city developed as an agriculture and Portuguese services center until the independence of Mozambique from Portugal in 1975.

After independence the new government renamed the city to Lichinga. Over a decade of Marxism under the leadership of Mozambique's first president, Samora Machel, transformed the city. The effects of 17 years of civil war (1975-1992) spread famine and disease in Mozambique resulting in many deaths and refugees in the region around Lichinga.