Nearly 4 000 people are isolated in Mozambique’s Mabote area, cut off by flooding after Cyclone Freddy hit the Southern African country on 24 February 2023, says ForAfrika’s country manager for Mozambique, Arsenio Mucavele.
Cyclone Freddy is expected to return to Mozambique at the weekend.
Mucavele and other ForAfrika staff flew into Mabote district on 8 March to meet with members of Mozambique’s National Disasters Management Institute, other humanitarian aid organisations and local authorities to assess the situation. With 700 staff in seven countries across the continent, ForAfrika is the largest indigenous non-governmental organisation in Africa.
“The situation is critical due to the mobility challenges across the district, plus information about the damage is scarce, and the data collected keeps changing on a daily basis. It gets more and more frightening as new figures come in,” says Mucavele.
Available figures to date show that, in the Mabote district:
- 3 928 people are displaced (currently they are being housed at 14 resettlement centres where access to the areas is severely limited)
- 14 schools are flooded
- 176.55km2 of crops are damaged, corresponding to 73% of the total area planted during the current planting season and affecting 11 710 farmers
- 1 127 cashew nut trees have been destroyed
- 137 livestock are dead
Needs:
- Immediate food assistance for the internally displaced people
- Hygiene kits
- Special water purification kits – water is contaminated due to the floods and new cases of diarrhoea are rising at resettlement centres
- Emergency non-food items (blankets, cups, mosquito nets, spoons, soap, tarpaulins, pots, etc.)
- Seeds and tools for the second planting season
- Water tanks
- Reconstruction kits (building)
ForAfrika is planning to respond to the Cyclone Freddy aftermath in Mabote district with food and non-food items for affected households.
To find out more: https://www.forafrika.org/our-work/emergency-response/cyclone-in-mozambique/ To assist ForAfrika in Mozambique: https://www.forafrika.org/donate/
