Mozambique

Flood ravaged Mozambique's needs remain pressing
Associated Press, April, 26, 2000

Torrential rains from two cyclones swept away the homes or livelihoods of 10 percent of Mozambique's 19 million people. They damaged more than 600 primary schools, wrecked more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) of roads and downed 400 kilometers (250 miles) of power lines. Crops in fertile river valleys in central and southern Mozambique were destroyed. Large tracts of agricultural land have become quagmires. Finance Minister Luisa Biogo recently cut economic growth projections to 6 percent for this year, and said inflation would almost double to 10 percent. The World Bank's preliminary estimates of the cost of the flooding is about dlrs 1 billion. Malloch Brown, speaking from Dakar, Senegal, where he was attending an education conference, said donors should help Mozambique recover totally from the disaster, in order to keep one of the continent's rare success stories going.