Massi Kessi (Portuguese: Macequece) is a town near (and almost a suburb of) Mutare in the Manicaland province in Zimbabwe, near the border with Mozambique, on the road and railway to Beira.
Massi Kessi was the headquarters of the Portuguese in Manica, who are considered the first Europeans to settle this area of the world (starting in 1520).
In the 1880s, as the British are eyeing on Portuguese territories in East Africa, the Kingdom sent the artillery captain Joaquim Carlos Paiva de Andrada to restore the Portuguese outposts scattered in the region.
He obtained the authorization to extract and sell minerals, and created the Companhia de Moçambique in December 1888.
[2] As a result, the British government pushed through the Manika Treaty on June 11, 1891, that ensured ownership of Manica by the British South Africa Company; until then, the Portuguese colonial area had extended to the Mazoetal river, almost to Harare, Shamv and Mount Darwin.