More than ten million Mozambicans are registered to vote in today’s poll which is the closest in forty years of independence.

Frelimo, that’s ruled the country for all this time, has put up a no-change candidate Felipe Nyusi who’s favoured to replace president Armando Guebuza.

Today voting is a test of the country’s stability threatened when Afonso Dhlakama went back to the bush two years ago.

He’s leading Renamo into a fifth election, and the party’s in danger of losing its official opposition status to the Movement for a Democratic Mozambique led by former Beira mayor Daviz Simango.

In such a closely contested race, watched by more than 1 000 observers at the 17 000 polling stations, it’s important that the loser should accept defeat.

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Frelimo’s Felipe Nyusi is expected to win the contest and replace Armando Guebuza as president. Ends intro

The real race is between Afonso Dhlakama’s Renamo and the breakaway Mozambique Democratic Movement for Daviz Simango for the role of official opposition.

Mozambique, once the poorest country on the planet, is experiencing a resources boom.

It’s people expect this to create jobs and break the inequality that grips the country.

More than 1000 observers from the region and further abroad are in the country for the fifth election since the end of the civil war in 1992.

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Filipe Nyusi, who’s favoured to win the contest told the crowd at a final rock-and-roll rally that Frelimo will fight growing corruption in the country it’s ruled for nearly 40 years.

South Africa’s among those countries and organisations with observer missions to Mozambique’s presidential and legislative election set to give the country its first post-colonial leader.

However it’s the gaze of foreign investors that is most important for a nation about to reap enormous wealth from its emerging gas industry.

Felipe Nyusi, who’s taking over from Armando Guebuza, who’s completed his constitutionally limited two terms, says his name, in the local Makonde language, translates to mean bee.

He promises to make honey for all Mozambicans.

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