Good afternoon. News that Mozambique is once again planning to install another one-stop border post, this time on the Tanzanian border (see below), may be greeted with dismay in the north-east of Cabo Delgado province. If there is one place along the border where ordinary Mozambicans are willing to cross and do cross regularly, it is not at Negomano, where the one-stop crossing is to be set up, but further east, at the crossing between Namoto in Mozambique and Kilambo, a few kilometres from the coast. But Negomano has a bridge to get across the natural border of the Rovuma river, while Namoto only has a ferry.
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Tom Gould
Around the Negomano border crossing, humans are probably outnumbered by animals, but the ferry at Namoto is thronged by people from Palma and Mocímboa da Praia districts moving back and forth over the border to trade, the traditional livelihood of the Mwani and Makwe ethnic groups living in this area. The main commercial centre for them is not the provincial capital of Pemba, hundreds of kilometres to the south, but the Tanzanian town of Mtwara, a short way north across the Rovuma river. The eastern Mtwara region (in which Makwe is spoken, the same language spoken in Palma district) and Cabo Delgado’s north-eastern districts form a cross-border linguistic and economic region, albeit one that the Mozambican government has done little to encourage. Until the coming of the giant gas projects to Palma district, central government showed no interest in these parts or their development. The road to the ferry crossing is a dirt road.
