The first air flight from Lisbon to Lourenço Marques (the present-day Maputo), calling at Guinea‐Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe and Angola, took place from 5 September to 26 October 1928. The flight was commanded by Captain Celestino Pais Ramos, who was assisted by Captain António de Oliveira Viegas, Lieutenant João Maria Alves Esteves and Sergeant/Mechanic Manuel António. In 1932 the Portuguese Minister of Colonies, Dr. Armindo Monteiro, who had travelled by sea from Lisbon to Luanda, took the train and crossed Africa from Angola to Mozambique. He travelled in carriage number 108 of Benguela Railways, the 1st coast-to-coast train crossing of southern Africa by a Portuguese railway carriage. A research line focused on air terminal buildings at Mozambican airports should take into account the history of regional aviation and articulate it with the development process of other rail, road and maritime transport infrastructures. It is also necessary to deepen the existing knowledge on the coordinating role played by the former colonial institutions responsible for the transportation sector, in particular the Mozambique Ports, Railways and Transport Services Directorate (Direção dos Serviços dos Portos, Caminhos de Ferro e Transportes de Moçambique or, in short, CFM, Caminhos de Ferro de Moçambique [Mozambican Railways]). This paper seeks to analyse the CFM’s public transport network in 1970, the year before the publication of the “History of the Mozambique Railways”, by the historian Alfredo Pereira de Lima, and of the bulletin “Ports and Transport of Mozambique”, published in June 1971.

The book is available HERE