Mozambique’s next export base: Afungi measured from orbit, and the gap Mozal leaves

In March 2026 Mozal, the aluminium smelter outside Maputo, went onto care and maintenance after its owner, South32, failed to agree a price for the electricity it needs. Two months earlier, almost 1,900 km to the north, TotalEnergies had announced the full restart of Mozambique LNG on the Afungi peninsula, five years after an insurgent attack on nearby Palma stopped it.

One of Mozambique's oldest export earners has gone quiet just as the biggest new one gets going again. For anyone who trades with Mozambique, lends to it, supplies its ports and contractors or holds its debt, the question is the gap in between: how big it is, how long it lasts, and how much of the new money stays in the country.

The project companies publish milestones; they do not publish pictures. So we measured the Afungi site ourselves, on every clear satellite pass since 2017, through the clearing, the stoppage and the restart. And we rebuilt Mozambique's export base product by product from the trade data, to put a number on what Mozal carried and on how much LNG it takes to replace it.

What the site shows is not quite what the timetable says.