Flag of Mozambique

How to read it

Article 297 of the Constitution of 2004 sets out the flag and its meanings. It has five colours, red, green, black, gold and white: green, black and gold horizontal stripes from top to bottom, separated by strips of white, and on the side by the pole a red triangle with a star in its centre, on which a hoe and a gun lie crossed over a book. Article 13 names the flag, the emblem and the anthem as the symbols of the republic. The current version of the flag dates from 1983, Club of Mozambique notes.

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The book, the hoe and the rifle

The constitution gives the three objects one meaning each: the book is study, the hoe production and the gun defence. The same three, superimposed on a map of the country, are the centre of the national emblem (article 298), where the constitution reads them as education, the peasantry and agricultural production, and defence and vigilance. The rifle is an AK-47, the Kalashnikov, in press reports of the debates below.

Proposals to change it

The 2004 constitution itself provided for changes to the flag and the emblem to be made by law within a year of its coming into force (article 302). On 15 June 2005 parliament approved a law proposed by an ad hoc committee and opened a three-month national competition for new designs, IOL reported in August 2005; the new symbols were to reflect the blood shed in the war for independence and national unity, peace, democracy, social justice and the wealth of the nation. Frelimo’s Edson Macuacua argued against changing the flag, Renamo’s Fernando Mazanga for new symbols reflecting democracy. The rifle was still on the flag in November 2025, when the politician Venâncio Mondlane, leader of the Anamola party, submitted a draft revision of the constitution to parliament to remove the rifle and the hoe and put a book in their place, Club of Mozambique reported. He called the rifle a military symbol.

Telling it from Zimbabwe’s flag

Zimbabwe’s flag has the same idea of a triangle at the pole with a star, but its triangle is white, its star red with a gold bird on it, and its seven stripes run green, gold, red, black, red, gold, green.