Groups interested in freeing Mozambique from Portuguese colonial rule and making it an independent nation emerged in the early 1900s, shortly after Portugal had defeated the last of the native chieftaincies and established effective control over the territory.
In 1920 or 1923, a government sponsored organisation, the Liga Africana was established in Lisbon for assimilados, members of the tiny minority of Africans in the colonies who had been given citizenship status.
According to Chilcote, "Africans manifested demands through these organisations by urging moderate reforms in the 1930s and focusing discussion on direct participation for the urban masses in the 1940s.
This was later forced by the government to change its name to Centro Associativo dos Negros de Moçambique; and was banned in 1965 for alleged subversion and terrorism.
At the second All-African Peoples' Conference, in Tunis, 1960, the MAC was superseded by the Frente Revolucionária Africana para a Indêpencia das Colônais Portuguesas (FRAIN).
The first organisation with full intentions toward national liberation was founded by Mozambican exiles in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Nyasaland (now Malawi), on October 2, 1960, and called the União Democrática Nacional de Moçambique (UDENAMO).
Tanganyikan (now Tanzanian) president Julius Nyerere was sympathetic to the nationalists, and in April 1961 UDENAMO moved its headquarters to Tanganyika's capital, Dar es Salaam.