Foreign tourists visiting Mozambique surged in 2023, up 85.7 percent from the previous year to more than 1.1 million.
State-run Radio Mozambique shared that the country recorded 1,153,698 visitors in 2023, the majority of which (65.5 percent) came for leisure. While a dramatic improvement over 2022, when just 461,438 foreign visitors came to the southern African country, it is still 43 percent below pre-pandemic numbers from 2019, when the tally reached 2,032,923.
The data was presented by Adriano Matsimbe, national director of sectoral and business statistics at Mozambique’s National Institute of Statistics, at the opening of the 10th International Tourism Fair in Maputo on Thursday.
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Top destinations in Mozambique include the capital of Maputo, beaches in the southern and central parts of the country, Gorongosa National Park and the Island of Mozambique, a UNESCO World Heritage Site off the coast of Nampula Province.
Neighbouring South Africa is the main source of tourists, accounting for 33.5 percent of the total, followed by Portugal (10.3 percent), the United Kingdom (6.2 percent), the United States (6.2 percent), Italy (4.4 percent), Brazil (3.8 percent), India (2.6 percent) and China (2.3 percent).
All of these countries, save Brazil and India, enjoy easy access to Mozambique. Citizens of South Africa, as a fellow member of the Southern African Development Community, do not require a visa to visit. The remainder operate under a new e-visa programme, launched in December of 2022 to attract more visitors to the country.
