Mozambique - Libraries and museums

The National Library of Mozambique, founded in 1961, contains 110,000 volumes. There is a small public library system. The principal museums in Maputo are the Museum of Natural History, founded in 1911, specializing in natural history and ethnography; the Freire de Andrade Museum (minerals); and the Military History Museum. Beira and Nampula have general museums; Manica has a natural history museum; and Isla da Inhaca, near Maputo, has a museum of marine biology. After a long and brutal civil war lasting for more than a decade, the condition of these institutions is at best unknown.