From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tete is the capital city of Tete Province in Mozambique. It is located
on the Zambezi River, and is the site of a
one-kilometre-long suspension bridge. A Swahili trade centre before
the Portuguese
colonial era, Tete continues to dominate the centre-west part
of the country and region, and is the largest city on the Zambezi.
Tete is a word for "reed".
History
The region was an important Swahili trade centre before the Portuguese colonial era. On the east coast of Africa
the Portuguese were drawn to Mozambique and the Zambezi river by news of a local ruler, the
Munhumutapa, who has fabulous wealth in
gold. In their efforts to reach the Munhumutapa, the Portuguese
established in 1531 two settlements far up the Zambezi - one of
them, at Tete, some 260 miles from the sea. The Munhumutapa Kingdom
and his gold mines remained autonomous and mostly isolated from the
Portuguese. But in this region of east Africa - as in Portuguese
Guinea and Angola in
the west - Portuguese involvement became sufficiently strong to
survive into the third quarter of the 20th century. Under
Portuguese influence Tete had become a market centre for ivory and gold by the mid-17th century. Given a Portuguese
town charter in 1761, it became a city of the Portuguese Overseas Province of Mozambique in 1959.
After the Portuguese Colonial War in
Portuguese Africa and the April 1974 military
coup in Lisbon, the then
Portuguese Overseas Province of Mozambique become an independent
state. The newly-independent People's Republic of
Mozambique, created in 1975 after the exodus of Mozambique's
ethnic Portuguese, descended into civil war between 1977 and
1992.
Transportation
Chingodzi Airport (IATA:
TET, ICAO:
FQTT) on the north-east side of the city has a 2.4
km paved runway. The one-kilometre-long Tete Suspension Bridge,
finished in 1973 by the Portuguese and designed by Edgar Cardoso, is a
major transportation facility in the region. It is a vital link on
the major highway linking not just northern and southern parts of
the country, but Zimbabwe
and Malawi as well. This
bridge and the Dona Ana Bridge downstream will soon be
joined by a new bridge at Caia as the only bridges across the
lower Zambezi.
Demographics
| Year |
Population[1] |
| 1986 |
56,178 |
| 1997 |
104,832 |
| 2007 |
152,909 |
References
External
links
Coordinates: 16°10′S 33°36′E / 16.167°S
33.6°E / -16.167;
33.6
Mozambique
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