About

Pemba.org covers Pemba, the port city on Mozambique's northern coast and capital of Cabo Delgado province. It sits on one of the largest natural bays in Africa, and over the past decade it became the staging town for the offshore gas fields of the Rovuma Basin, a few hundred kilometres to the north.

That makes Pemba a place where three stories run into each other. The gas projects: TotalEnergies' Mozambique LNG, ExxonMobil's Rovuma LNG and Eni's floating plants offshore, and the contracts, jobs and logistics they bring. The insurgency that has hit Cabo Delgado since 2017, and the troops and politics around it. And the city itself, with its old Portuguese quarter, Wimbe Beach and the Quirimbas islands up the coast.

We write for the people who need to understand Pemba from outside: suppliers and contractors, analysts, aid workers, journalists, investors and travellers. Most of what is published about the city is scattered across Portuguese government releases, company statements and conflict trackers. We read those sources, check them against each other and explain them in plain English, with dates on anything that changes.

There is a second Pemba. Pemba Island, off the coast of Tanzania and part of Zanzibar, is a green, quiet island of clove plantations, mangroves and some of the best diving in East Africa. It has its own section here, under the Pemba Island tag.

Pemba.org is an independent site. It has no affiliation with the governments of Mozambique, Tanzania or Zanzibar, or with any of the companies it covers.