Cooperation and exchange networks in architectural education: Notes from post-independence Mozambique

Abstract

Formal architectural education in Mozambique is a relatively recent development.1 It was not until 1986, eleven years after gaining independence from Portuguese colonial rule, that the country’s first school of architecture opened its doors. Despite the construction boom experienced after the end of the Second World War, architects working in the territory during the colonial period were either trained in Portugal or neighbouring South Africa. Once independence was achieved in 1975, the local training of architects remained a pending task. The new, post-independence government did not prioritise it for several reasons: the association between architecture and the real estate speculation practices that had previously excluded most of the Mozambican population, the continuation of ongoing projects supported by foreign development workers, the widespread belief that territorial planning concerned only economy and society and not architecture, and, ultimately, because ‘no one knew what architects really do