Background
The nation of Mozambique is a small country located in South-East Africa in between the countries of Tanzania, Zimbabwe and South Africa. First "discovered" by the Portuguese, it became a regular port of call for trading vessels in the area. During the European colonization of Africa, the Portuguese seized this land for their own. Mozambique suffered nearly five centuries under Portuguese influence before finally achieving true freedom in 1975. However, extreme drought, large scale emigration and an ongoing civil war hindered its economic development. The road to recovery was finally started when the country formally abandoned Marxism in 1989. The civil war was ended with a UN supervised peace treaty in 1992. The final transformation was the replacement of the dictator of 18 years with Mozambique's first elected president. The country's economy, while still extremely poor, is growing steadily.
Current Affairs
Despite a number of setbacks, the economy of Mozambique is growing steadily. Major flooding in 2000 slowed GDP growth to 2% but a full recovery was made in 2001 with a growth of 14%. The government has reported growth of between 7 and 10 percent since. However, it has not been all good news. The last set of elections were flawed due to voter fraud, use of government funds for campaigning and the questionable disqualification of other candidates. This blatant disregard for the democratic system caused the removal of Mozambique from the list of electoral democracies. Its economy, though, still is improving as it is based almost completely on agriculture. Mozambique still has more than 80% of its arable land yet to be converted to farmland. The country might also benefit from the profits from large natural gas deposits that were recently discovered. Other than this, Mozambique is relatively poor in natural resources. In terms of religions, Christianity is the main religion, with Islam and indigenous beliefs in second and third, respectively. An large number, nearly 19%, expressed that they held no religious beliefs. Unfortunately, the health system is quite poor with infant mortality at one in ten and three physicians per one hundred thousand people.