Mozambique: Nyusi inaugurates Beira Green Park – Watch

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Mozambique: Nyusi inaugurates Beira Green Park – Watch

4:41 CAT | 21 Dec 2020

All photos: Courtesy of Conselho Municipal da Beira

Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi on Saturday inaugurated a “Green Park”, covering 45,000 square metres, in the heart of the central city of Beira.

The park cost 17 million euros (about 20.7 million US dollars), financed by the Mozambican government and by the German Development Bank, KFW. The park runs along both banks of the Chiveve river, which has long been regarded as the “green lung” of Beira.

The park will improve the Beira drainage system, and provide an area for leisure, relaxation and sport. A cycleway and footpath runs through the park for 3.2 kilometres, and 3,100 square metres of the park are devoted to children’s playgrounds. There are five open air gymnasiums, and two multi-use sports fields. A grassy area, covering 27,000 square metres, is available for Beira residents to hold picnics.

There is also a modern market with space for 82 fixed stalls, 55 mobile stalls, and 24 shops, a restaurant with space for 200 clients, and a building for exhibitions.

Cited by Radio Mozambique, Nyusi said the park is not merely an attractive leisure space, but should serve as a school for education about climate change. Construction of the park was part of the government’s vision of building infrastructures that are more resilient to climate change.

By improving the city’s drainage system, the park would also help reduce the risk of natural disasters in Beira.

“In ecological and environmental terms, green spaces in urban areas help regulate the local climate or microclimate”, Nyusi said, “through the capacity of plants to absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen. They help regulate temperature, and provide protection against wind, rain and soil erosion”.

“These are places that bring us closer to nature”, the President said, “and that promote our health, including our mental and emotional health”.

They provide a refuge for flora and fauna, in the heart of large cities, and thus help protect biodiversity.

Nyusi urged the citizens of Beira to preserve their new park. “I would not like to hear that this place, with its unequalled beauty, has become a centre of crime, a shelter for criminals, a dangerous place for users, or a rubbish dump for people living in nearby neighbourhoods”.

He urged the Beira municipal authorities to be implacable towards “those who only think about destroying what benefits the majority, what benefits the municipal citizens of Beira, and Mozambicans in general”.

The Mayor of Beira, Daviz Simango, said that with the park and the earlier improvements to the city’s drainage system, “we have reduced vulnerability to flooding, and we have ended high levels of pollution due to the dumping of solid waste. We have also solved the problem of water and soil contamination”.

Simango was proud that “today Beira has won the status of the city with the largest park of green infrastructures in Africa”.