Angoche

Angoche is a district, city and municipality in Nampula Province in north-eastern Mozambique. Its principal town, known as António Enes in the colonial period, lies 185 kilometres from the provincial capital, Nampula. The district borders Mogincual District to the north, Larde to the south, Mogovolas to the west and the Indian Ocean to the east. According to local oral tradition, before Vasco da Gama arrived in 1498 the Angoche archipelago was inhabited by a Swahili community on the East African coast, and the dominant group, the Anhapakhos, belonged to a family said to have come from Shiraz. From the beginning of the 1930s the mainland Angoche region became one of the centres of cashew and rice production, alongside the traditional fishing of the coast.