Africa-Press – Mozambique. Mozambican authorities on Friday warned of “large-scale” flooding in the country and flooding of at least four million hectares of agricultural land during the upcoming rainy season, which begins in October.
“In the second period [of the rainy season], which is January, February and March, we believe we will have rainfall and major flooding, which we classify as high, especially in the Incomáti, Maputo and Limpopo basins,” said Agostinho Vilankulos, national director of Water Resources Management, on the sidelines of the National Climate Outlook Forum for the 2025/2026 rainy season in Maputo.
According to the official, the dams in Mozambique’s neighbouring countries, including South Africa and Eswatini, are at 99% of their storage capacity and therefore have little capacity to accommodate additional water, a situation that will force runoff and consequent flooding in the country.
“If the dams are full, then they have no capacity to take in more water, so any rain that falls in neighbouring countries will turn into runoff and come into our country,” warned Vilankulos, pointing to the regions of Matola, Maputo, Beira and Quelimane as being at “high risk of flooding”.
The national director of Water Resources Management said that the agricultural sector is also expected to be affected by the rains, with at least four million hectares at risk.
“We are thinking that about four million hectares of potentially agricultural land are at risk, and of this number, we are also including about seven thousand hectares in the city of Maputo,” said Agostinho Vilankulos.
At the same event, Isaías Raiva, a climatologist at the National Institute of Meteorology, said that rainfall will be recorded throughout the country between January and March 2026, with a major impact on the southern part of Mozambique, in addition to “some dry periods”.
Américo José, from the Mozambican National Institute of Health, predicts a higher incidence of malaria and diarrhoea in the provinces of Nampula in the north, Zambézia and Tete in the centre of the country during the rainy season, considering that climate change represents a “direct and indirect threat to the health sector”.
Hiten Jantilal, national director of agriculture, announced preventive measures in view of the approaching rains, including recommendations to farmers on “when to start sowing and how to minimise the risk of pests and diseases”.
On 3 September, Mozambique’s President Daniel Chapo asked the population of Sofala, in the centre of the country, to leave areas prone to flooding during the rainy season, as he handed over 840 houses built by the Taiwanese non-profit humanitarian organisation, the Tzu Chi Foundation, for victims of Cyclone Idai.
“We have to leave the risk areas. Risk areas are those areas that can flood at any time during the rainy season, and whenever there are floods here in Búzi, when people are in the risk areas, it is not easy to get them out after the flooding,” said Daniel Chapo.
Mozambique is considered one of the countries most severely affected by climate change, facing cyclical floods and tropical cyclones during the rainy season, which runs annually from October to April.
Between December and March alone, during the last cyclone season, the country was hit by three cyclones, including Chido, the first and most severe, at the end of 2024.
The number of cyclones hitting the country “has been increasing over the last decade,” as has the intensity of the winds, according to the report on the State of the Climate in Mozambique 2024, published in March by the Meteorological Institute.
Extreme events caused at least 1,016 deaths in Mozambique between 2019 and 2023, affecting around 4.9 million people, according to data from the National Statistics Institute.
For More News And Analysis About Mozambique Follow Africa-Press
