Mozambique–Zambia border

Coast to coast, or not

In 1886 Portugal signed treaties with France and Germany that in effect recognised its claim to a continuous strip of territory across Africa, linking Mozambique and Angola. Britain replied that it would recognise only claims backed by actual occupation, as the 1885 Berlin Conference required.^[1]

Cecil Rhodes’s British South Africa Company, chartered in 1889, extended its rule north of the Zambezi in 1891, into what became Northern Rhodesia and later Zambia. An Anglo-Portuguese treaty of 11 June 1891 then set the border: from the watershed with Lake Nyasa, south-west to where the 15th parallel meets the Luangwa, then down the middle of that river to the Zambezi.^[1]

“…it runs in a south-westerly direction to the point where south latitude 15° meets the River Aroangwa or Loangwa, and follows the mid-channel of that river to its junction with the Zambezi.”^[1]

Beacons and independence

An Anglo-Portuguese commission marked the line with 38 beacons, from rubble piles to masonry pyramids, and signed its record on 21 November 1904. Britain and Portugal approved it by an exchange of notes in 1911.^[1]

Northern Rhodesia became independent as Zambia on 24 October 1964. When the US Geographer wrote in 1971, Portugal still treated Mozambique as an overseas province and an integral part of Portugal.^[1]