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Mozambique: cyclone early warning system in practice - Case Study

Страны
Мозамбик
Источники
IFRC
Дата публикации
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Background

Mozambique lies along the eastern side of southern Africa. Like its neighbours, the country experiences a complex mix of social trends and natural disasters that contribute to high levels of vulnerability that negatively impact its development. At independence in 1975,
Mozambique was one of the world’s poorest countries. The violent civil war that followed left much of the country’s infrastructure in tatters and, although political stability since the peace agreement in 1992 and the first multi-party elections in 1994 has led to improvements in the country’s growth rate, in 2006 Mozambique was still ranked 168th on the Human Development Index1 .

Natural disasters are a common phenomenon in the region. In 2000, the world’s attention turned to Mozambique as severe floods hit the Limpopo basin. The primary cause of flooding in the country is heavy rainfall, poor management of upstream dams and wetlands in other parts of southern Africa, and tropical cyclones. The country’s coastline forms almost the entire western boundary of an extremely active tropical cyclone belt – the south-west Indian Ocean basin – which generates nearly 10 per cent of the world’s cyclones annually. Tropical cyclones originating from this basin hit Mozambique once a year on average, while lowermagnitude tropical disturbances strike three or four times a year. However, droughts are historically more frequent than both floods and cyclones and impact on more people, with the most severe drought in recent memory occurring in 1991–1992.

As in other southern African countries, Mozambique has been hit hard by the HIV pandemic, with an HIV prevalence rate2 of 16.1 per cent. Life expectancy at birth is 41.9 years.