Until 1960, there were many more Portuguese people living in Mozambique than vice versa. Around 80,000 of them were settled there, many because of the Salazar regime’s encouragement of citizens to migrate to its southeast African colony as part of a poverty-reduction program for Lisbon.

The first wave of migration from Mozambique to Portugal took place prior to the 1974 Lusaka Accord, the precursor to Mozambican independence, although the details are patchy. A second wave occurred during the violent 1977-1992 Mozambican Civil War, in which a million people died and 5 million more displaced. This already massive crisis was exacerbated by floods in the 1970s and droughts in the 1980s.

The third phase took place in the late 1990s, with many families looking to reunite. This period also saw many students coming to the former imperial capital to study at its universities. One of their more well-known predecessors is the late painter and poet Malangatana Ngwenya, who moved to Lisbon to study engraving and ceramics in the 1970s. He later campaigned for peace from his home country; his moving artworks depict the suffering and struggles of a troubled nation in astonishing color palettes.

Nowadays there are around 7,000 people of Mozambican nationality living in Lisbon, 600 or so of them students. Despite the fact that this group is one of the most representative migrant communities from the PALOP (Portuguese-speaking African countries) group in absolute terms, there is little marking their presence in the city institutionally.