The Mozambique Channel

The Mozambique Channel is too wide to feel like a strait: even at its narrowest, Madagascar lies more than 400 kilometers from the African mainland. Yet it funnels much of the shipping that sails between the Persian Gulf, Asia and the Atlantic by way of the Cape of Good Hope, and that traffic grew after late 2023, when attacks in the Red Sea led many shipowners to avoid the Suez Canal. Its scattered islands are divided among the Comoros, France and Madagascar, with sovereignty over several of them disputed. The seabed off northern Mozambique holds some of the largest natural gas discoveries in Africa, now being developed despite an insurgency onshore.

The channel runs about 1,600 kilometers from the Comoros in the north to the open ocean off southern Mozambique and is between about 420 and 950 kilometers wide. Its deepest point, about 3,300 meters, lies off the Mozambican coast. The Comoros archipelago guards the northern entrance, including Mayotte, which France administers and the Comoros claims. Farther south lie France's small Scattered Islands, among them Juan de Nova, Europa and Bassas da India, which Madagascar claims. Warm water moves south through the channel in large eddies that feed the Agulhas Current. Main ports include Beira, Nacala and Pemba in Mozambique and Mahajanga and Toliara in Madagascar. Tropical cyclones cross the channel most years, including Freddy in 2023 and Chido, which struck Mayotte and northern Mozambique in December 2024.

Arab and Swahili traders sailed the channel for centuries before Vasco da Gama reached Mozambique Island in 1498, and Portuguese ships bound for India used its currents and harbors. The Suez Canal drew most Europe–Asia traffic away after 1869, but the canal's closures in 1956 and 1967–75, and supertankers too large to use it, sent tankers back to the Cape route. Gas finds in the Rovuma Basin off Cabo Delgado since 2010 brought major investment: an Eni-led floating plant began exporting liquefied natural gas in 2022, and TotalEnergies announced the full restart of its onshore Mozambique LNG project in January 2026, after suspending it in 2021 because of the insurgency in the province. France and Madagascar have discussed the Scattered Islands in a joint commission since 2019 without settling the claim.

• Mozambique
  A long Indian Ocean coast steeped in Swahili and Portuguese worlds bordered by
• Madagascar
  A continent of its own off the African coast borders
• Mozambique
  A long Indian Ocean coast steeped in Swahili and Portuguese worlds borders
• Comoros
  A volcanic archipelago at the mouth of the Mozambique Channel islands in
• Cabo Delgado
  Mozambique's northernmost province, where an Islamic State-linked insurgency persists beside Africa's largest gas projects offshore gas near
• The Cape of Good Hope Route
  The long way around Africa between Asia and Europe, revived by the Red Sea crisis and the 2026 Iran war on the route
• Indian Ocean
  The world's third-largest and warmest ocean part of