Where Is Mozambique? A Traveller’s Guide to the Map
Mozambique is on Africa’s southeastern coast, between Tanzania and South Africa. Map, provinces, largest cities, size, rivers and islands.
On this page
- Where is Mozambique?
- Map of Mozambique
- How big is Mozambique?
- Mozambique’s provinces
- Mozambique’s main cities
- The coast and islands
- Rivers and lakes
- Mountains, plateaux and lowlands
- Climate across the regions
- National parks and reserves
- How the geography shapes your trip
- See the map for yourself
- Still not sure?
Mozambique is a country on the southeastern coast of Africa, facing the Indian Ocean, with Tanzania to the north, South Africa and Eswatini to the south, and Madagascar across the Mozambique Channel. It covers 799,380 km² of land and inland water, divided into ten provinces plus the capital, Maputo City. It is the kind of country where the map matters more than usual. The coast is so long, and the regions so different, that where you land decides what kind of trip you have.
A little geography turns a list of place names into a plan. It explains why most visitors see only the south, why a flight can save you two days of driving, and why the same month can be dry on one stretch of coast and humid on another. This guide covers where Mozambique is, how big it really is on the ground, its provinces, coast, islands, rivers and mountains, with a map to hold it all together.
- Area
- 799,380 km², about two-thirds the size of South Africa.
- Coastline
- 2,470 km as usually measured, or 4,312 km following every inlet.
- Neighbours
- Six countries by land, and Madagascar across the Mozambique Channel.
- Provinces
- Ten provinces plus Maputo City, grouped as north, centre and south.
- Highest point
- Monte Binga, around 2,436 m, on the Zimbabwe border.
- Population
- 34.1 million people, in the 2025 national projection.
Where is Mozambique?
Mozambique lies on Africa’s Indian Ocean coast and shares land borders with six countries: Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Eswatini. Madagascar lies across the Mozambique Channel; it is not a land neighbour. The national capital is Maputo, in the far south. These locations follow the Mozambican government’s geography reference.
Mozambique stretches from 10°27′ S at its northern tip to 26°52′ S at its southern tip, the extreme points in the national 2024 Statistical Yearbook. Its land borders add up to 4,838 km. The longest are with Malawi (1,533 km) and Zimbabwe (1,395 km); the shortest is the 112 km with Eswatini.
Most people describe Mozambique as part of southern Africa, and it borders the region’s best-known countries. The UN’s statistical grouping of the world’s regions places it in Eastern Africa instead. You will see both labels; they describe the same country on the same coast.
The distinction between the mainland and the islands matters when you plan. A booking in Mozambique could mean a mainland town or an island stay. Ask for the actual destination and transfer arrangements; the country name alone tells you very little about the journey.
Map of Mozambique
This map of Mozambique shows every provincial capital alongside the islands, parks and mountains travellers ask about. Use the region buttons to see the north, centre or south on its own, and tap a pin for what is there. For every beach, island and town we cover, open our interactive map of Mozambique.
On the map
Mozambique, north to south
The provincial capitals, the main islands and the landmarks on this page. Tap a pin for details.
See this on the map of Mozambique
- Xai-Xai
- Beira
- Chimoio
- Tete
- Quelimane
- Nampula
- Pemba
- Lichinga
- Inhaca Island
- Ponta do Ouro
- Island of Mozambique
- Quirimbas Archipelago
- Monte Binga
- Gorongosa National Park
- Cahora Bassa
- Lake Niassa
- The south — Maputo, Gaza and Inhambane provinces — holds the capital, the beaches of Ponta do Ouro and Tofo, and Vilanculos with the Bazaruto Archipelago. It is where most visitors spend their time.
- The centre holds Beira, the Gorongosa and Chimanimani parks, and the Zambezi with the Cahora Bassa lake in Tete.
- The north is the high plateau of Niassa, Lake Niassa, the Island of Mozambique and the Quirimbas islands off Cabo Delgado.
How big is Mozambique?
Mozambique covers 799,380 km², about two-thirds the size of South Africa, and stretches roughly 1,800 km from north to south in a straight line. The area comes from the national statistics institute, INE: 786,380 km² of land and 13,000 km² of lakes and other inland water. South Africa measures about 1,221,037 km² in the CIA World Factbook. The north–south figure is our own calculation from the country’s extreme latitudes, which are more than 16 degrees apart.
Those numbers only come alive on the road. INE lists how far each provincial capital is from Maputo, both as the crow flies and by the most-used road. The gap between the two columns is the real story: the roads bend around rivers, mountains and coastline, and Lichinga, on the northern plateau, is 2,807 km away by road.
| From Maputo to… | Province | Straight line | By road |
|---|---|---|---|
| Xai-Xai | Gaza | 149 km | 206 km |
| Inhambane | Inhambane | 367 km | 469 km |
| Beira | Sofala | 717 km | 1,205 km |
| Chimoio | Manica | 765 km | 1,135 km |
| Quelimane | Zambézia | 1,000 km | 1,616 km |
| Tete | Tete | 1,091 km | 1,569 km |
| Nampula | Nampula | 1,390 km | 2,149 km |
| Lichinga | Niassa | 1,430 km | 2,807 km |
| Pemba | Cabo Delgado | 1,665 km | 2,578 km |
Distances from INE’s 2024 Statistical Yearbook; road distance follows the most-used route.
What this means in hours, on the southern coast where we run transfers:
- Maputo to Inhambane or Tofo: about 480 km and around 8 hours up the EN1 to Inhambane city, 500 km and 8h30 to Tofo.
- Maputo to Vilanculos: roughly 715 km and about 11h30. LAM flies the same route in about 1 hour 15 minutes.
- Vilanculos to Tofo: about 315 km, roughly 5 hours.
- Vilanculos to Beira: 497 km, about 9 hours 30 minutes.
Put another way, the long day’s drive from Maputo to Vilanculos covers just over a quarter of the road distance to Pemba. That is why a Mozambique trip works best in one region at a time, with a flight if you want to add another. Our getting-around guide compares the options, and the Maputo–Vilanculos transfer shows what a door-to-door day on the EN1 looks like.
Mozambique’s provinces
Mozambique has ten provinces plus Maputo City as a separate provincial-level unit, grouped by the government into north, centre and south. That is why references can appear to disagree about the count. Maputo City and Maputo Province are separate entries, not duplicate names for the same area.
| Province | Capital | Region | Area (km²) | Population (2025) | Why travellers go |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Niassa | Lichinga | North | 129,056 | 2,349,195 | Lake Niassa and the Niassa Special Reserve |
| Cabo Delgado | Pemba | North | 82,625 | 2,900,429 | The Quirimbas islands (check current advice) |
| Nampula | Nampula | North | 81,606 | 6,984,269 | The Island of Mozambique |
| Zambézia | Quelimane | Centre | 105,008 | 6,313,864 | Gilé National Park and the Primeiras and Segundas islands |
| Tete | Tete | Centre | 100,724 | 3,368,004 | Cahora Bassa and the Zambezi |
| Manica | Chimoio | Centre | 61,661 | 2,429,085 | Chimanimani and Monte Binga |
| Sofala | Beira | Centre | 68,018 | 2,827,922 | Gorongosa National Park |
| Inhambane | Inhambane | South | 68,615 | 1,616,068 | Vilanculos, Bazaruto, Tofo and Inhambane |
| Gaza | Xai-Xai | South | 75,709 | 1,500,120 | Limpopo and Banhine national parks |
| Maputo Province | Matola | South | 26,058 | 2,662,034 | Ponta do Ouro and Maputo National Park |
| Maputo City | Maputo | South | 300 | 1,139,476 | The capital — see our Maputo guide |
Areas and capitals from INE’s 2024 Statistical Yearbook; population is INE’s 2025 projection in Vital Statistics 2024–2025; regions follow the government’s grouping.
Niassa is the largest province by area, bigger than Zambézia or Tete, yet it has fewer people than most. Nampula, in the north, is the most populous, with almost 7 million people in the 2025 projection; together with Zambézia it holds close to four in every ten Mozambicans. The whole country counts 34,090,466 people in that projection, about 43 per km².
Our home province, Inhambane, is one of the least populous — and it holds most of the coast that visitors come for. Read our safety guide and the current official travel advice before choosing a northern province, where advice differs by district.
Mozambique’s main cities
Mozambique’s largest city is Maputo, with about 1.08 million people in the 2017 census, followed by Matola, Nampula and Beira. Only the first four passed half a million; after them the cities drop off quickly, and most provincial capitals are towns of a few hundred thousand people at most.
| City | Province | Population (2017 census) | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maputo | Maputo City | about 1,080,000 | National capital, on Maputo Bay |
| Matola | Maputo Province | about 1,032,000 | Capital of Maputo Province, next door to Maputo |
| Nampula | Nampula | about 760,000 | The largest city of the north |
| Beira | Sofala | about 592,000 | The port city of the centre |
| Chimoio | Manica | about 363,000 | Capital of Manica |
| Quelimane | Zambézia | about 348,000 | Capital of Zambézia |
| Tete | Tete | about 307,000 | Capital of Tete |
| Nacala | Nampula | about 288,000 | Port city, not a provincial capital |
| Lichinga | Niassa | about 242,000 | Capital of Niassa |
| Pemba | Cabo Delgado | about 201,000 | Capital of Cabo Delgado |
| Xai-Xai | Gaza | about 142,000 | Capital of Gaza |
| Maxixe | Inhambane | about 130,000 | Across the bay from Inhambane, not a provincial capital |
| Inhambane | Inhambane | about 82,000 | Capital of Inhambane Province, the town behind Tofo |
| Ilha de Moçambique | Nampula | about 65,000 | The former capital, on its own island |
Resident population of each city district in INE’s 2017 census tables, rounded. Other compilations differ by a few percent because they adjust for people missed in the count or use different boundaries.
The 2017 census is the latest official count for individual cities: INE’s projections to 2050 stop at province level. For the capital alone, that projection puts Maputo City at about 1.14 million people in 2025. Maputo and Matola are two separate municipalities that have grown into one conurbation, so the capital region held about 2.1 million people between them in 2017. Nacala and Maxixe are the two cities on the list that are not provincial capitals; every other entry except the Island of Mozambique is the capital of its province.
Vilanculos, our home town, is a city too, although a small one. It became a city in 2020 and sits in Inhambane Province, facing the Bazaruto islands. Our Vilanculos guide covers the town, and the where-to-go guide helps you pick a base among all of the above.
The coast and islands
Mozambique’s entire coast faces the Indian Ocean, and it is long by any measure: 2,470 km in the CIA World Factbook, or 4,312 km in INE’s own count, which follows every bay and inlet. Neither figure is wrong. A coastline’s length depends on how closely you trace it, and Mozambique’s is full of bays, estuaries and islands.
The coast changes character from south to north. The government describes the south as a broad coastal plain, and the north as a plateau with a narrow coastal strip fringed by coral reefs. For a traveller that means long dune-backed beaches in the south and island-studded, reef-edged water in the north.
The main island groups, south to north:
- Inhaca, across Maputo Bay from the capital.
- The Bazaruto Archipelago, off Vilanculos: five islands inside a national park, the heart of the southern island coast and our home water.
- The Primeiras and Segundas islands, off Nampula and Zambézia, inside an environmental protection area.
- The Island of Mozambique, the small coral island in Nampula that gave the country its name, a World Heritage site since 1991.
- The Quirimbas Archipelago, off Cabo Delgado, where the southern islands are protected in the Quirimbas National Park.
Our islands guide compares them in detail, and the beach guide covers the mainland coast.
Rivers and lakes
The Zambezi is Mozambique’s great river: 2,575 km long in total, with 820 km of it inside Mozambique, according to INE. Its basin is shared by eight countries, and the Cahora Bassa dam and lake, in Tete Province, sit on its Mozambican stretch. The government uses the Zambezi to divide the country: north of it, a great plateau; south of it, a wide plain.
INE lists thirteen main river basins in Mozambique, and most of the large ones are shared with neighbouring countries. A selection:
| River | Length | Basin in Mozambique | Whole basin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zambezi | 2,575 km, 820 km in Mozambique | 181,834 km² | 1,390,000 km² |
| Limpopo | 600 km in Mozambique | 86,398 km² | 422,741 km² |
| Rovuma | 650 km | 100,126 km² | 154,727 km² |
| Incomáti | 783 km | 14,998 km² | 46,649 km² |
| Messalo | 594 km | 24,456 km² | Entirely in Mozambique |
From INE’s 2024 Statistical Yearbook, which draws on the national water directorate.
Lakes are fewer but striking. In the far north, Niassa Province takes in a shore of Lake Niassa (Lake Malawi), part of it protected as the 6,000 km² Lake Niassa Partial Reserve. Inhambane Province has more lakes and lagoons on INE’s list than any other province.
Mountains, plateaux and lowlands
Mozambique rises from sea-level plains on the coast to inland plateaux and mountains, with its highest ground in the Chimanimani range on the Zimbabwe border. The government’s geography account describes a broad southern coastal plain cut by river valleys, including the Limpopo, and a northern plateau with a narrower coastal strip.
ANAC, the national conservation authority, identifies Monte Binga, at around 2,436 m, as the country’s highest peak, in Chimanimani National Park in Manica Province, near the Zimbabwe border. Its Chimanimani park profile describes rocky mountain landscapes and distinctive plants and animals. In Sofala, Mount Gorongosa rises to 1,864 m, part of the Gorongosa National Park landscape.
The height changes what you feel. Lichinga, Niassa’s capital, sits 1,360 m up on the plateau, and INE recorded an average overnight low of 8.4 °C there in August 2024. The same year, Tete, just 142 m above sea level, averaged daytime highs of 39.5 °C in December. Pack for altitude if your trip goes inland; the coast is a different climate altogether. Our guide to landscapes and plants covers what grows where.
Climate across the regions
Mozambique has a tropical climate with one rainy season, from October to March, and a cyclone season from November to April, as defined by INAM, the national meteorological institute. The north is wetter than the south, and the months from May to September are the driest along the coast. The INAM annual climate report is the source for these seasons.
For month-by-month conditions, sea temperatures and the wildlife calendar, use our best time to visit Mozambique guide.
National parks and reserves
Mozambique protects large areas of its land and sea, from the Niassa Special Reserve in the north to Maputo National Park on the South African border. These are the areas as ANAC lists them in the national yearbook; park authorities sometimes publish figures for slightly different boundaries.
| Park or reserve | Province | Area |
|---|---|---|
| Niassa Special Reserve | Niassa | 42,200 km² |
| Limpopo National Park | Gaza | 11,233 km² |
| Primeiras and Segundas (protection area) | Nampula, Zambézia | 10,409 km² |
| Quirimbas National Park | Cabo Delgado | 9,130 km² |
| Banhine National Park | Gaza | 7,250 km² |
| Zinave National Park | Inhambane, Gaza | 6,000 km² |
| Maputo National Park | Maputo Province | 4,516 km² |
| Gorongosa National Park | Sofala | 4,070 km² |
| Chimanimani National Park | Manica | 2,378 km² |
| Bazaruto National Park | Inhambane | 1,463 km² |
From ANAC’s list of conservation areas, published in INE’s 2024 Statistical Yearbook.
How the geography shapes your trip
The simplest way to use Mozambique’s geography is to pick one region, travel it by road, and fly only when you change region. The south has the densest run of beaches, islands and towns on a single paved road, the EN1. The centre and north reward travellers with more time, and in the north you should check current advice district by district.
A Mozambique itinerary works best when you check each connection between the places you choose. Use this sequence:
- Pick the places you want to visit in the destination guide.
- Check the connections in getting around Mozambique.
- Compare your dates with the when-to-visit guide.
- Use the 10-day itinerary as a planning example, then adjust it to your own arrival and departure points.
If your plans include our Bazaruto and Benguerra day trip, tell us where you are staying when you enquire. That gives us a concrete starting point for the day’s arrangements. For the flag, time zone and other quick answers, see our Mozambique facts. For the country’s story, continue with the history of Mozambique and the people of Mozambique.
Common questions
Understanding the map.
Is Mozambique a country or an island?
Is Mozambique in southern Africa?
Which is bigger, South Africa or Mozambique?
Does Mozambique have a sea or an ocean?
What is the capital of Mozambique?
Does Mozambique have ten or eleven provinces?
Is Maputo City the same as Maputo Province?
What are the biggest cities in Mozambique?
What is the biggest province in Mozambique?
What was Maputo called before?
Is Matola part of Maputo?
Is Vilanculos a city or a town?
Is Zambézia in northern or central Mozambique?
Which province are Vilanculos, Tofo and the Bazaruto islands in?
What is the longest river in Mozambique?
What is the highest mountain in Mozambique?
What is Mozambique famous for?
What was Mozambique called before?
See the map for yourself
Still not sure?
Our Mozambique travel guide connects country background with practical planning. Browse the guide contents, or message us with the places you have in mind — we’re a local operator in Vilanculos, and we can tell you what the distances between them mean in practice.
Last reviewed: 21 October 2026. Sources: INE’s 2017 census tables (city populations); INE’s 2024 Statistical Yearbook (area, extreme points, borders, provinces, distances, rivers, conservation areas, 2024 temperatures) and Vital Statistics 2024–2025 (2025 population projection); Mozambique’s government geography and general-information pages; the UN Statistics Division’s M49 regions; the CIA World Factbook (coastline, South Africa’s area); ANAC’s Chimanimani and Quirimbas profiles; Gorongosa National Park; African Parks; UNESCO World Heritage; INAM. Travel times on the southern coast are from our own transfer operations. Each source is linked beside the relevant information. Current routes and travel restrictions require a separate check before departure.
