Mozambique: Government mulls sovereign natural disaster insurance

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Mozambique: Government mulls sovereign natural disaster insurance

2:28 CAT | 15 Mar 2022

Photo: Conselho Executivo Provincial de Nampula

The Prime Minister of Mozambique, Adriano Maleiane, yesterday advocated instituting a sovereign insurance scheme against losses from droughts and floods in the country.

“It is important to investigate how we might have insurance against droughts and floods, so that families do not suffer so much,” said Maleiane, quoted today by public broadcaster Rádio Moçambique.

The Prime Minister was speaking at a meeting of the Emergency Operating Committee (COE) in Nampula, in the north of the country, after visiting areas devastated by the passage of Cyclone Gombe on Friday.

“We are looking at having sovereign insurance, because it is not possible to predict what will happen in terms of infrastructure. As resilient as we can be, climate change is presenting us with a scenario that we didn’t know about,” the Prime Minister said.

In Nampula province, Adriano Maleiane flew over the districts of Ilha de Moçambique and Mossuril and visited the district headquarters towns of Monapo and Mogincual, where he highlighted as priorities the replacement of access roads and electricity.

Maleiane.fb_.fb_ — *Photo: Conselho dos Serviços Provinciais de Representação do Estado – Nampula*

“I found transitability problems and, as a result, the services that depend on it are blocked. We have collateral problems because of that. As for electricity, the good news is that we are carrying out the reconnections,” he noted.

Cyclone Gombe has killed 15 people, a spokesman for the National Institute for Disaster Management (INGD) told Lusa on Monday.

“These new deaths are the result of collapsed infrastructure and fallen trees,” the source explained, adding that at least 50 people were injured.

According to INGD data, a total of 100,441 people were affected in the provinces of Nampula (north of the country) and Zambézia (centre). Of this number, at least 11,000 were accommodated in the 25 centres created by the authorities to provide assistance to communities.

By Monday, the Mozambican authorities had recorded 11,882 houses completely devastated and two bridges destroyed, as well as the downing of 141 power poles.

Cyclone Gombe arrived on the Mozambican coast in the early hours of Friday as an intense cyclone with torrential rain and winds of 165 kilometres per hour, gusting to 200.

Gombe comes three years after, in one of the most severe rainy seasons in memory, Cyclones Idai and Kenneth hit, respectively, the central and northern parts of the country.

Source: Lusa / Rádio Moçambique