The northern Mozambican province of Cabo Delgado has been dubbed Cabo Esquecido or the ‘forgotten cape’ because it has long been Mozambique’s poorest and most politically marginalized region despite its wealth of natural resources in rubies and natural gas.
The rise of an insurgent group, which has terrorized the population since 2017, means that eyes around the world are now focused on this formerly ‘forgotten’ region.
Yet the region has always been a key economic corridor in one sense, namely for illicit trafficking flows that traverse the East African coast. Drug trafficking (chiefly of heroin and, more recently, methamphetamines and cocaine), human smuggling, illicitly exported timber, illegal wildlife products, and smuggled gems and gold all pass from or through Cabo Delgado. The prevalence of organized crime has shaped the region’s political economy and contributed to the breakdown of governance in which the insurgency emerged.
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