Reconstruction conference postponed

An international conference to raise money for Mozambique after this year’s massive floods has been postponed to late July, AFP reported on Wednesday, quoting a government official. “The conference initially scheduled for June 14 could only take place towards the end of July,” Silvano Langa, head of the National Disaster Management Institute (INGC), told AFP.

Floods unleashed in January in Mozambique’s central Zambezi valley left 84 people dead. Langa said the postponement was due to delays in preparing a financial appeal report to be given to donors ahead of the meeting, to be held in Mozambique. He said the needs assessment has been completed “but we are still finalising the document to be presented to our partners”.

Langa would not say how much the country would request from donors, but indicated that it would be nowhere near last year’s requirements when the country suffered the worst flooding in living memory. The Mozambican government asked for US $450 million from the international community at a conference in Rome. The 2000 floods claimed about 700 lives, most of them in the south of the country.