Following a proposal from the cultural managers of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) office in Maputo, a study was carried out in October 2006 to prospect the archives of the documentation kept in the government headquarters of the Ilha Ibo district, in the province of Cabo Delgado, in northern Mozambique. The opportunity was also taken to make several visits to different archives in the country and research centres, and strictly municipal documentation was also located, which formed part of an interesting documentary collection of the island’s old port, which had important commercial activity from the 18th century until independence in 1975.

Funded by the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation (AECID), the study assessed the possibility of carrying out two projects: on the one hand, the organization of the municipal archive of Ilha Ibo, which occupied about 100ml and was in a serious state of conservation; and on the other hand, the establishment of a general document management system for the municipal archives given that a process of decentralization of functions began in 2006.