Good afternoon. It is never a good sign when the N380 highway in Cabo Delgado is in the news. The N380 is the only tarmac road linking northern Cabo Delgado to the south and thereby to the rest of the country; when it is severed due to bad weather or insecurity, the north (including the big gas projects on the Afungi peninsula) is cut off by land.
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Since January, the Islamic State-backed insurgents have been putting up roadblocks on the N380 and stopping traffic to demand payment from travellers and take hostages, as well as mounting attacks nearby. It was also in January that the Mozambican armed forces stopped providing military escorts along the N380, at a time when it seemed that Rwandan troops had restored calm along the road corridor.
But the situation is changing rapidly and, in the last week, security forces have been dismantling some of those roadblocks. Earlier this week, a group of travellers reported safely making the 400km journey from Nangade near the Tanzanian border to the provincial capital of Pemba, almost from one end of Cabo Delgado to the other, which took them along the entire length of the N380. They had no escort. However, it is still partly a matter of luck.
