Appendixes :

Appendix 1

 

Historical Investigations on Drought and Famine:

El Niño in Mozambique

 

 

Introduction

 

With regard to Mozambican history, there has been little work on El Niño as such, but there is some very interesting work on drought and famine,[1] linking it to important historical changes, as well as to epidemics and plagues of locusts, usually Red Locusts.  The more difficult task, given that Mozambique, especially southern Mozambique, is prone to drought, is to ‘separate the signal from the noise’.  Research conducted by S. J. Young on this problem is discussed below, in relation to other historical investigations, particularly those of Liesegang and Newitt. .

 

El Niño can be considered an extreme climate event, which at times gives rise to extreme weather events, such as floods and drought.  Fossil coral evidence[2] suggests that El Niño is at least 125,000 years old, and the 65 years covered by the fossil evidence has a similar periodicity to now, if one ignores the apparent changes in El Niño’s pattern since 1976,[3] which may be related to global warming.[4] 

 

While such climate events as El Niño (warming of the eastern Pacific ocean off the coast of south America) and La Niña (the corresponding cool event) can be extreme by recent historical standards, they pale by comparison with previous climate changes such as ice ages, or the even more extreme ‘snowball earth’. The latter event is postulated by some scientists as having occurred some 700 million years ago, and as having been the basis for the development of complex life on earth.[5]  However, current global warming may be a climate change of similar importance to the global warming which appears to have led to the extinction of 90 per cent of life on earth some 350 million years ago, or the meteor-induced cooling and extinction of life forms associated with the disappearance of the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago.[6]

 

Such geologically related evidence should be borne in mind as a broader context within which to evaluate current climate change and extreme weather events, including those recorded over the last 250 years or so.

 

 

Historical work on drought in Mozambique

 

An unpublished typescript for a book by G. Liesegang contains detailed descriptions of droughts, famines, epidemics and locust infestations from the mid-18^th century.[7]  It also contains material going back beyond the 18^th century, but this Appendix will confine itself to the period beginning with the El Niño of 1791,[8] and what seems to be the associated drought in Mozambique.

 

Richard Grove of Cambridge University, UK, has analyzed the big El Niño event 1791 in terms of southern Africa and attempts are being made to gain access to this analysis.  Liesegang notes a source recording famines from 1791 overlapping in Inhambane and Lourenço Marques (present-day Maputo, capital of Mozambique) as well as in the Zambezi valley in the center of the country.  In Tete, much of which has a generally dry climate despite straddling the river Zambezi, hunger started in 1792 and continued until 1796, with loss of numerous herds of livestock, including total extinction of pigs. The loss of crops and livestock led to large numbers of Africans dying, and others deserting the area for other lands. Downstream on the Zambezi, at Sena, the land conserved some moisture, which enabled them to supply food at great cost to the city of Tete.  Otherwise the city of Tete would have been completely deserted.[9]

 

Additional sources are available to cover the period from 1800.  The work of P. D. Tyson[10] is cited in various sources on the environment in southern Africa.[11] [12]   The table based on this work is reproduced here (with minor presentational changes), as Table A1, but it does not explicitly relate drought and rainfall to El Niño.

 

 

Table A1

Climatic Change 1800-1992: A historical overview of drought and rainfall patterns in Southern Africa since 1800

 

1800-1830	Southern African rivers, swamps and other water sources dried up.  Some well-watered plains turned to semi-karoo (dry area).
1820-1830	This was a decade of severe drought throughout Africa
1844-1849	Southern Africa experienced five consecutive drought years.
1870-1890	This period was humid in some areas and former Lake Ngami filled in the northwest of Botswana. (despite generally decreased rainfall – see below)
1875-1910	There was a marked decrease rainfall in southern Africa, and 1910 experienced a severe drought.
1920-1930	Severe droughts in the region.
1930-1950	Southern Africa experienced dry periods alternating with wet ones, and in some years the rains were very good.  The 1946-47 season experienced a severe drought.
1950s	There was abnormally high rainfall in some parts of the region.  East Africa experienced flooding, and Lake Victoria rose by several meters.  Elsewhere, the equatorial region experienced below normal rainfall.
1967-1973	This six-year period was dry across the southern African region.  The equatorial region experienced above average rainfall.
1974-1980	This period of six years was relatively moist over much of southern Africa.  In 1974, the average annual rainfall was 100 per cent above normal throughout the region.
1981-1982	Most of southern Africa experienced drought.
1982	Most of sub-tropical Africa experienced drought.
1983	This was a particularly bad drought year for the entire African continent.
1985	Conditions improved
1986-1987	Drought conditions returned
1991-1992	Southern Africa, excluding Namibia, experienced the worst drought in living memory

 

 

Although not explicitly related to El Niño, Table A1 suggests impacts of El Niño, and La Niña.  The period since 1950 also conforms well to the pattern suggested by SATR[13] in terms of warm and cold El Niño/ Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events. 

 

According to Chenje and Johnson[14] scientists first recorded theories about the cyclic nature of the rainfall in the southern African region in 1888.  By 1908, a South African scientist based in Natal (next door to southern Mozambique) had found evidence of an 18-year cycle of wet and dry years.  P. D. Tyson is again cited as providing research evidence that seems to support this theory.[15]  Exactly how this might relate to the dominant 6-year return period of El Niño is unclear without access to the original work.

 

The extent to which this is confirmed by other sources is discussed below, as are the impacts in Mozambique.  Tyson appears to attribute about one-third of the droughts in southern Africa to El Niño[16] but in the case of drought-prone southern Mozambique, the connection may be closer than that, as discussed below. 

 

One reason for believing that rainfall in Mozambique may be more affected by ENSO events is evident in Chenje and Johnson:[17]

 

‘The region’s drier ecozones are particularly affected by rainfall patterns, and the frequency and intensity of drought cycles.  Scientists studying these ecozones think that areas receiving less than 300-400mm rainfall annually are controlled more by the short-term changes in rainfall than the long-term average.  This is particularly so where the amount of rainfall differs on a yearly basis from the average by more than a third.

 

Areas receiving an average of 400-600mm of rainfall per year can expect six droughts of two years or more in every 50 years.  Few areas in southern Africa receive rainfall in excess of 1,600mm.’  If such droughts were all related to El Niño, then at a crude level it would imply a periodicity of about 8 years, rather than six.  However, the basis of this judgment is not clear from Chenje and Johnson.

 

A fairly large proportion of southern Mozambique (Gaza Province mainly) receives 400-600mm of rainfall or less per year on average, and most of the rest (Inhambane Province and parts of southern Sofala Province) has rainfall of between 600 and 800mm per annum.[18]  Consequently, one would expect that southern Mozambique would be more vulnerable to relatively short-term climate changes, such as are induced by ENSO.  The same is true in the case of Tete, where average annual rainfall is also around 600-800mm per annum, with a small pocket around 400-600mm.  If central and northern Mozambique is affected by drought, then it is reasonable to presume that this could be related to quite strong El Niño events.  Here the effect would be more likely to be connected to the tendency of El Niño to induce a shift to the north of rain emanating from the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ).

 

 

Research Explicitly Linking Drought and El Niño in Southern Mozambique

 

S. J. Young[19] argues that, for the analysis of southern Mozambican societies in the period 1850-1950, climate is the central factor in defining and delimiting potential life.  For her, the occurrence of severe droughts defines the success or failure not only of rural food production strategies, but also of the social forms of organization defining interdependence and redistribution of resources among people.[20]  The paper has a table comparing El Niño events of varying strengths with official reports of rainfall in southern Mozambique in the 19^th and 20^th centuries.[21] This is reproduced below (with minor presentational changes).

 

 

Table A2.   ENSO Warm Events and Southern Mozambique Droughts 1850-1912

 

Key:    

Proper names indicate location of weather stations

Blanks indicate absence of drought or warm event

 

ENSO Strengths -

M         Moderate

M+       Moderate Plus

S          Strong

S+        Strong Plus

VS        Very Strong

 

YES     Drought Present

Q1…     Quarter of year in which drought recorded

ND        No Data                                               

SST      Sea Surface Temperatures

L          Mentioned in Liesegang (1993)   

S          Mentioned in SATR (1999)

 

YEAR	INHAMBANE	GAZA	LOURENÇO MARQUES	ENSO Strength
1850	1850	ND	YES	S
1854-55		ND		S
1857-59	1858 Q1, Q2, Q4	ND		M+
1860		1860 Q1,Q2
1861	1861 Q1
1862	1862 Q3, Q4	1862 Q4	1862 Q4	(M-)
1863		1863 Q1,Q2	1863 Q1	S+         (Single
		1864 Q1, Q2	1864 Q1, Q2, Q4	Event)
1865-66				M+
1867-69 L				S+
1876-78 LS	1876 Q1, Q2, Q4		1876 Q1, Q2, Q4	VS         (Single
			1878 Q4	Event)
1880-81				M+
1882			1882 Q1,Q2,Q4
1884-85	(1885 Q1)		(1885 Q1)	M+
1887-89 L			1887 Q4	S+         (Single
			1888 Q4
	1889 Q1,Q4	1889 Q4	1889 Q1,Q4	Event)
1892			1892 Q1, Q2	VS (1891)
1895	1895 Q2	1895 Q1,Q2	1895 Q1,Q2,Q4
1896-1897	1896 Q4		1896 Q2,Q3,Q4	M+        (Single
		1897 Q1, Q2	1897 Q1, Q2	Event)
1899-1900	1899 Q4		1899 Q4	VS         (Single
			1900 Q1	Event)
1901-02	1902Q1,Q2, Q4		1902 Q1,Q2,Q4	S+
1903			1903 Q1,Q2,Q4
1904-05	1905 Q1,Q2	1905 Q1		S
1907				Cold SSTs
1908	1908 Q4		1908 Q4
1911-12	1911 Q4		1911 Q1, Q2	M+        (Single
	1912 Q1,Q2,Q4		1912 Q1,Q2,Q4	Event)

 

 

This analysis is more specific than that of Tyson as shown in Table A1 above, both in temporal and spatial terms.  It is nevertheless worth comparing the two tables, and linking these analyses with those of Liesegang (1993) and Newitt,[22] in order to assess the social impacts of different droughts in relation to El Niño events.  Young cannot be compared directly with SATR, except where the latter explicitly mentions earlier El Niño events, such as the one in 1877-78.[23]

 

Of the 16 cases of events shown as M+ to VS, 11 correspond to evidence of drought.  A twelfth case of drought corresponds to an M- case, which is shown in brackets.  This gives 12 out of 17 events, a strong relationship.  In one of the ENSO events, which she classifies as not showing drought in southern Mozambican, Liesegang (to whose typescript she also had access) notes that there was evidence of famine in South Africa, Mozambique and eastern Zambia.  Young does not have access to specific references to the south for this year.[24]  In addition, for the events of 1881 and 1891, there were droughts in Mozambique in 1882 and 1892 respectively.  Since many ENSO warm events seem to last for more than one year, this suggests that the relationship is possibly even stronger than is claimed by Young, who it seems is being deliberately cautious.  Given the SATR analysis of ENSO[25] events, this connection between El Niño and drought in southern Africa, especially southern Mozambique, makes sense.  In evaluating this evidence of teleconnections, it should be noted that while Gaza and Inhambane tend to be dry anyway, Inhambane city is in a small area that normally tends to have somewhat higher rainfall, of over 1000mm per annum.  Consequently, if that city was recording drought, it is likely to be the case that rainfall would be worse in the surrounding areas.  However, the official reports used by Young are probably referring to areas outside the city.

 

Whatever the strength of the teleconnection, it is enlightening to compare the work of Tyson, Young, Liesegang, and where appropriate Newitt.  This enables one to evaluate the social impacts of El Niño related droughts.[26] 

 

 

Social Impacts of Droughts and Famines

 

Tyson’s Table A1 starts in 1800.  The effects of the 1791 El Niño drought seem to have been over by 1797,[27] and consequently droughts mentioned after that year are not related to it.  Liesegang cites a source mentioning drought in Lesotho in 1800-1803, and a corresponding famine in 1802-1804, but there is no mention in available sources for southern Mozambique, despite the fact that such droughts and famines in Lesotho often correspond to ones in southern Mozambique.[28]  In 1807-1808 there was again a famine in Tete, and many slaves died, with cereal price doubling or tripling.  In 1812 and 1816-1818 droughts are again recorded for Lesotho.  After 1818 the Mozambican evidence is much fuller, and the droughts are often treated as related to the well-known major social changes, known as the mfecane, which affected large parts of southern Africa.[29]

 

In 1818 Maganja on the river Shire north of Sena on the Zambezi was said to be unable to trade because of hunger.  This was normally a cereal surplus area, relying partly on rain fed and partly on flood recess agriculture.[30]  There were also unfavorable conditions for agriculture in 1822-1823 on the lower Zambezi near Sena, but more interesting for present purposes are the problems beginning in 1825.  Liesegang notes that there seems to have been a famine in 1825, and people were given permission to cultivate on the Zambezi islands (a classic tactic for coping with drought) at the end of 1825, because of the lack of rain.  In 1828 there was a major El Niño.[31] In 1827-1829 hunger induced most inhabitants of the small town of Sena to abandon the town.  There was also drought in southeastern Zambia and in Zimbabwe from 1827 to 1829, possibly extending in some areas until 1830-1831.[32]  In Inhambane in 1827 many were falling dead on the beaches looking while looking for shellfish (another classic drought response tactic).  There were also food shortages in Lourenço Marques in 1827, until around February-March 1829.  An Nguni military expedition in 1828 also fell victim to starvation.[33]

 

Other historians, including Newitt, and Vail and White, mention the droughts and famines of the 1820s in the area around Sena.[34]   Newitt’s 1988 article is the most detailed on the social, economic, political and environmental impact of the droughts, especially for the late 1820s, that is around the time of the major El Niño of 1828.  Among the environment related impacts are smallpox and plagues of locusts, which seem quite often to occur with drought until preventative measures were taken in the twentieth century.[35]

 

Newitt states that 1824 was a better year,[36] implying a distinction between the drought of 1822-1823 and that beginning in 1825, which was evidently much bigger and longer lasting.  From a historical point of view, the earlier droughts of around 1818 and 1822 are important because they had already made the population more vulnerable, and normal coping strategies were less likely to work because e.g. food stocks had already been depleted.  Consequently, the very serious drought beginning in 1825 hit an already vulnerable population, and the social changes were thus much more profound than even such a serious drought might have led one to expect.  This was a period of major change in southern Africa.  The Portuguese response was to try and sustain existing trading conditions, but this proved impossible, according to Newitt, and the result, apart from widespread violence and looting, was that many Africans voluntarily sold themselves or their children into slavery.  Coming as it did at a time when Brazil was known to be about to cease importing slaves as of 1830, the drought led to a rush of slave exports from Mozambique in the late 1820s.

 

From an ENSO climate event viewpoint, it is interesting that the drought and associated famine continued into 1830 and 1831.[37]  For example, from February to December 1831 there was no rain at all in Inhambane.  Some 2,000 slaves died.  Nearby, there were reports of almost universal mortality in the hinterland, with emergency measures to bury the dead being necessary in both Inhambane city and the hinterland.  Similar stories are recorded for the far north of Mozambique, in Cabo Delgado,[38] normally an area with over 1400mm of rainfall per annum nowadays.[39]  Liesegang also cites the example of Mozambique Island, also to the north, where the public granary (another tactic for coping with drought and famine) was empty by July 1831.[40]  The drought broke in 1832 and despite the rains failing again in 1833 (an indication of ‘normal’ rather than ENSO related drought, one assumes) and in 1836 a slow recovery had begun.  Newitt states that contemporary observers ‘were well aware of the magnitude of the ecological catastrophe that had taken place and attributed to it the far-reaching changes that were affecting every aspect of life in east-central Africa’.[41]

 

The next major period of drought mentioned in the Tyson Table A1 (before being comparable with the Young Table A2) is that of 1844-1849, with five consecutive drought years in southern Africa.  Liesegang cites the year 1845 in a short 1982 paper[42] as exhibiting drought and famine in the south, center and north of Mozambique.  His description of it in his 1993 work is more detailed, and food shortages seem to have begun in some parts of Mozambique in mid-1844.[43]  It was certainly widespread by 1845, with no rice available for European soldiers by December.  Food problems are reported in 1847, 1849 and 1850.  For example, one source cited for 1850 refers to ‘wars and hunger without remedy which have been general in this unhappy country’.[44]  There is no easy way to link this drought to El Niño, but its generality throughout southern Africa over five years, mentioned by Tyson, is suggestive.

 

From 1850, we are able to link the historical descriptions of social impact to Young Table A2.  While Tyson Table A1 makes no mention of the period from 1850 to 1870, Young explicitly relates droughts to El Niño from 1850.  Table A2 shows Strong El Niño events in 1850 and in 1854-1855, and a Medium Plus event in 1857-59.[45]  The first and last of these three events are associated with her official-report based evidence of drought in southern Mozambique.  Liesegang discusses 1850 as a continuation of the previous five-year drought, but notes drought in Lesotho for 1851-1852.  For January 1854, hunger is recorded in Sena, but the source does not indicate its cause.  However, in 1855 6,000 to 7,000 Africans died in Quelimane because the harvest had failed.[46]  This was reputedly associated with an increase in the slave trade.

 

Quelimane, in what is now Zambezia Province, has an average annual rainfall nowadays of more than 1400mm.  Zambezia as a whole has over 1000mm annually, with large parts receiving over 1200mm and over 1400mm.[47] It is one of the main parts of Mozambique to benefit from depressions and cyclones that are generated by the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), and is today an area of dense population.  Hence harvest failure there suggests a serious drought.  Liesegang’s sources state that further south in Inhambane the harvest was abundant. This corroborates Young’s weather station data from Inhambane. Taken together, this suggests that the El Niño simply moved the ITCZ north, as often happens, and so northern Sofala (at Sena) and Zambezia, rather than southern Mozambique, were the areas to suffer drought.  If this argument holds, then again the historical teleconnection seems perhaps stronger than Young argues. 

 

For 1857-1859, a Medium Plus El Niño event according to Young, Liesegang again corroborates Young’s data for Inhambane, in the sense that in March 1858 (Q1 in Young’s data) the drought led to a public order canceling the right to export grain.[48]  He also points out that in November 1858 (Q4 in Young A2) the drought ‘forced entire families to feed on sea food and wild fruits near Inhambane’.  In the Limpopo valley, in what is now the nearby Province of Gaza, the Gaza king Soshangane died in October 1858.  This is an evident indication of very serious drought in an area that is normally drier than Inhambane and with a shorter coastline for access to seafood.  Apparently it did not rain very much during the season 1858-1859, and in December there was continuing hunger in Chicualacuala north of the Limpopo in Gaza.  The drought also extended to Lesotho.  There was even less rain in 1859-1860.  This corresponds very well to Young’s 1859 Q4 for Inhambane, and 1860 Q1, Q2 for Gaza, and probably contributed to the overthrow of Soshangane’s successor in 1861, following further insufficient rainfall in Gaza in 1860-1861.  The insufficient rainfall for that period does not show up as drought in Young Table A2, but it shows that, as at other times in Mozambican history, the cumulative effect of drought and insufficient rainfall continued to have serious social and political consequences.

 

 For Liesegang, this is part of another period of major famines extending from 1858 to about 1863.  His description of the various associated historical events seems to fit very well with Young Table A2 from 1858 to 1864.  Young treats 1862 as a Medium Minus event in Table A2,[49] and 1863-1864 as a single Strong Plus event.  However, she also records droughts for 1860 and 1861 that are not related to El Niño.

 

The drought of the early 1860s extended to Lesotho and South Africa, which generally exhibit average rainfall figures similar to those of southern Mozambique,[50] and like the latter are more influenced in terms of rainfall by cold southern fronts than the ITCZ which dominates the weather in central and northern Mozambique.  Owing to the persistent drought, food was imported into South Africa. This did not prevent many from dying in Zululand in 1862-1863.[51]  The droughts of 1858 and 1861-1863 were also reported further north by the Livingstones for Tete.  Drought was confirmed by other sources in Tete in 1862-1863 and in other parts of the Zambezi valley.[52]  A similar picture as indicated by crop failures is evident for 1861-1863 for Inhambane, Lourenço Marques, and even in Angonia in the north of Tete.  The latter is particularly unusual since it normally has an annual rainfall of between 800mm and 1200mm, and is usually a food surplus area.  Since the 1863-1864 event is classified by Young as Strong Plus, perhaps its impact is not too surprising.

 

Despite the Moderate Plus event of 1865-1866, neither Young nor Liesegang have any evidence of droughts in Mozambique.  Nor is there any discussion of drought for the strong El Niño of 1871.[53]  For the Strong Plus event of 1867-1869, Young has no official evidence, but Liesegang does provide some evidence of dry years from 1867.[54]  For example, traders from Inhambane sent food to Bazaruto and Chiloane, two islands to the north of Inhambane, off the coast of Sofala, that probably normally have a rainfall of over 1000mm a year.  Lower Zambezia was also badly off for food, which suggests that again the ITCZ had moved with its rains to the north.  The drought may have been widespread, with a report of a famine suffered by the Ngoni at around this time in eastern Zambia, leading to a population movement and subsequent political split.

 

For the Very Strong event of 1876-1878,[55] Young Table A2 shows clear evidence of drought in Inhambane and Lourenço Marques in 1876, and again for the latter city in 1878.  Liesegang reports ‘a horrible famine’ in 1876 in Inhambane, together with insufficient harvests in Lourenço Marques, causing many local Africans to immigrate to Natal in South Africa.   By January 1877 food prices remained very high in Lourenço Marques, and great quantities were imported from Mozambique Island and from Zanzibar.  In early 1878 a famine was reported among the Tsonga of the Lowveld near Venda in South Africa, which also seems to have affected eastern Zimbabwe and the northern Transvaal and beyond in South Africa.[56]  Tsonga from the Limpopo area on Mozambique fled to a mountainous area in South Africa.  This is the El Niño event mentioned in SATR as having been associated with calamitous weather events around the Pacific and Indian oceans in 1877 and 1878.[57] 

 

As indicated earlier, while Young has no data for the Medium Plus event of 1880-1881, she does have drought evidence for 1882 for Lourenço Marques.  Liesegang again tends to corroborate this. Apart from Quelimane, which reported some food shortages, rainy seasons after 1878 were irregular but no serious problems are reported until 1882, when there are again references to calamities.  In July 1882, Inhambane confirmed ‘the scarcity of the harvest in the present year’ and recommended the suspension of exports.  This fits very well with Young’s Lourenço Marques data for Q1 and Q2, and her data also show problems for Q4. This then is one of the cases where the evidence of a teleconnection is weak, and Young does not treat it as one her 12 out of 17 cases.  However, she does indicate that in this case that she is not entirely sure of the year of the event.[58]

 

For the next event, also a Medium Plus,[59] Young has some evidence of drought for 1885 Q1, while Liesegang states that in December 1884 fishermen from Tete had been going down the river from the Lupata gorge to fish, and were exchanging their dried fish for cereals and sweet potatoes.  This suggests that very little water was coming down the Zambezi from what are now Zimbabwe and Zambia.  In addition, people were begging for food at the Lupata gorge and even organized attacks on boats transporting food.  In Tete city, there was no rain from the end of January to the end of December 1885.  Overall there was not enough rain in 1884-1885 for the crops to mature, and by June the government council was debating the situation in Tete.  The reports of very many deaths are graphic, with many ‘real walking skeletons’ presenting themselves at the doors of the missionary, Courtois, who reported that by early 1886 two thirds of the population of Tete had died. The drought and famine affected much of eastern Africa and northern Swaziland.

 

The next event is a Strong Plus for 1887-1889.  This implied little respite since the previous one, and by October 1887, when Young’s data shows drought in Q4 for Lourenço Marques, Macanga north of Tete was still in a state of disturbance due to the famine, which seems to have been continuous in the Tete-Zimbabwe borderland. There are reports of food shortages in central Mozambique (the Manica-Sofala border) in late 1888 and early 1889.[60]  Young’s data shows drought for Lourenço Marques for Q4 1888, and for both Lourenço Marques and Inhambane for Q1 1889.  She also has drought for both of these stations and for Gaza for Q4 1889, perhaps suggesting cumulative effects of strong El Niño events that last for more than one year. 

 

It is worth recalling that Tyson treats the period 1875-1910 as a period of marked decrease in rainfall in southern Africa. Even at times that do not correspond to El Niño events, Liesegang’ evidence tends to support this general picture, but more impressive is the fact that Young’s evidence clearly shows a string of Medium Plus to Very Strong events from 1876 through to 1911-1912.  The drought of 1887-1889 is only about one third of the way through this period.[61]

 

Liesegang has access to a much wider range of sources for the period from 1890.[62]   He provides rainfall data from the Lourenço Marques weather station where rainfall data starts from 1892.[63]  Following the Very Strong event of 1891,[64] Young shows drought for Q1 and Q2 of 1892.  This is not one of the cases that Young treats as indicating a teleconnection.  Liesegang’s use of the actual rainfall data for Lourenço Marques in 1892 corroborates this, with rainfall of around 400mm for January-September 1892.  The present-day annual average for Maputo is 800-1000mm.   In 1892, it seems to have been about 1000mm for the whole calendar year,[65] and this is certainly not a case for a teleconnection. 

 

Without any El Niño, Young reports drought in 1895 in Q2 for Inhambane, Q1 and Q2 for Gaza and Q1, Q2 and Q4 for Lourenço Marques.  Liesegang’s weather station rainfall data also shows drought in Lourenço Marques for 1895-1896.  This does not correspond to an El Niño.

 

There was a Medium Plus event in 1896-1897, and Liesegang’s data shows even lower rainfall for 1896-1897.  Young’s reports show drought for Q2-Q4 for 1896 and for Q1 and Q2 in 1897, in Lourenço Marques.  They also show drought for Q4 of 1896 in Inhambane and for Q1 and Q2 of 1897 in Gaza. It seems to have precipitated the killing of the nominal mother of the Gaza king in March 1987. The same drought is reported for Tete, and for South Africa and Zimbabwe. 

 

During the dry 1890s, the Red Locust also made its way south, making food scarcities worse.[66] The year 1897 is also famous as the year in which the previously unknown livestock disease rinderpest made its way south from east Africa and into South Africa.  Famine in South Africa was in part caused by the prohibition on using oxen for transport, as part of the attempt to stop the spread of rinderpest, and the 1897-1898 famine in Tanganyika was probably due to the same combination of drought and rinderpest, as well as Red Locusts.

 

With little respite, there being a near drought in 1898 in Lourenço Marques, the next El Niño took place in 1899-1900.  This is classified as Very Strong, and is certainly associated with drought in Liesegang’s rainfall data for Lourenço Marques (414mm) although Young does not appear to have a clear report of it for that city.  However, it does appear in Q4 in 1899 for Inhambane.  Liesegang reports famines in many parts of Mozambique for 1899, 1901 and 1903.  This fits quite closely with the two El Niño events, namely the Very Strong one of 1899-1900 and the Strong one of 1901-1902.  For example, to the north of Magude in what is now Maputo Province, there were reports in September 1899 of large numbers of people deserting the area for the mountains in the Transvaal in South Africa because of hunger and thirst.  This fits well with Young’s report of drought for 1899 Q4 for Inhambane, which is not too distant from the reported area.  In addition, Young has a clear report on rainfall for Lourenço Marques for 1899, Q4 and 1900, Q1. Liesegang’s rainfall data also clearly shows drought for 1899-1900 (414mm).

 

For the year 1900 in southern Mozambique there was drought, as well as in Tanganyika.[67]  In Lourenço Marques, however, 1900-1901 was paradoxically quite a good year for rainfall, although concentrated in three months.  Elsewhere rainfall was far below average, including in the center and far north of Mozambique. In Zambezia, the period brought starvation and death, with people dying like flies in the Boror area.  The Boror famine is reported in Vail and White.[68] There was also major outbreak of smallpox in Zambezia at this time. The exceptional rainfall position in Lourenço Marques for 1900-1901 appears to undermine the teleconnection evidence, but it is clear from Liesegang’s evidence that there is indeed a strong indication of a teleconnection, especially for 1899-1900, even for Lourenço Marques.  This holds true for 1900-1901 for most of Mozambique.

 

The Strong event of 1901-1902 must therefore have seemed like a continuation of the existing drought to people in Mozambique, and that is how it is treated by various sources.  Liesegang’s rainfall data show near-drought conditions for 1901-1902, and a clear drought for 1902-1903, where most of the very low rainfall was concentrated in the month of April.  For Young, there are reports of drought for both Lourenço Marques and Inhambane for Q1, Q2 and Q4 of 1902.  As for further north, on the Island of Mozambique, the rains for the season 1901-1902 did not start until January 1902, and by December 1901 it was stated that the native population would have died of hunger were it not for mangoes and cashew nuts.  Rains for February 1902 meant some kind of harvest, but food was scarce.  

 

Although Young has reports for Lourenço Marques indicating drought for Q1, Q2 and Q4 of 1903, this is not fully borne out by Liesegang’s rainfall figures, which are above 700mm.  There was no El Niño event in 1903, and the drought is probably a continuation of the previous year’s difficult food situation combined with low rainfall figures.  However, there does seem to have been drought in Inhambane, and in the lower Buzi, in the center of the country.  It also extended into well into South Africa (Transkei) and Lesotho,[69] so this does seem to have been a case of drought with no El Niño.

 

The next event that of 1904-1905 was a Strong one.  The Lourenço Marques rainfall data show clear drought.  Young has no report for that city, but for Inhambane and for Gaza, there are reports for 1905. 

 

While none of the years from 1905 to 1908 seem to have been very good (the generally low rainfall corroborating Tyson’s view of the end of this 35-year period) there were fairly good rains and crops in 1909.  The drought of 1911-1912, which is associated with a Medium Plus El Niño event, is corroborated by Young’s reports for both Lourenço Marques and Inhambane for 1911 and 1912.  The Lourenço Marques rainfall data also shows drought there.  It also failed to rain in Vilanculos to the north of Inhambane, and not only were the crops lost, leading to famine, but there was no water even to drink.  The famine in Inhambane seems to have lasted all of 1912.

 

Overall, as well as indicating a higher periodicity for El Niño than other studies suggest,[70] Young’s Table A2 can be taken as refining Tyson’s view that the period 1875-1910 was one of low rainfall, and 1910 experienced a severe drought.  Rather the period seems to be 1876 to 1912.  While Young’s Table A2 stops at 1912,[71] Liesegang and Tyson can be compared for later years. This forms the basis of the next chronological period, that from 1914.

 

 

El Niño and Mozambique from the First World War

 

The years 1915-1916 seem to have been ones of droughts in southern Mozambique.  The year 1917-1918 was a high rainfall year, and floods were experienced.[72]  Rainfall was again low in the years 1921 and 1922.  The drought and famine covered Lourenço Marques, Inhambane and Beira in Mozambique, and also extended to Swaziland and Zimbabwe.  In some areas it continued into 1923.  In November 1925 a bad famine was registered in east Africa, and low rainfall was recorded for Lourenço Marques in 1925-1926, followed by serious drought in 1926-1927.  The latter seems associated with a serious drought from 1926-1932 in Kruger National Park, in South Africa on the border with Mozambique, where thousands of animals died.  This drought seems to have been confined to southern Mozambique, Swaziland, and the low veld of South Africa. It included the loss of 13,000 head of cattle in Ermelo in South Africa.  There were fairly low rains for the next two years, and drought again in 1930-1931.  This corroborates Tyson’s view on this period.

 

Tyson treats the years from 1930 to 1950 as exhibiting dry periods alternating with wet ones.  Liesegang generally confirms this picture.  There was a drought and famine in 1935-1936 in Mozambique and Swaziland.  It seems to have continued in Zambezia in 1936-1937.[73]  There was further drought-induced famine in Gaza, Sofala and Zambezia in 1941, resulting in the loss of one third of the plantations at Sena Sugar Estates.  It seems to have extended into Swaziland and South Africa.  The rest of the 1940s were relatively dry, with South Africa, southern and central Mozambique having a disastrous intensive drought in 1946-1947.[74]  This again corroborates Tyson.  Yet another drought was experienced in 1949-1950, in central Mozambique.  It resulted in several thousand deaths in Tete. 

 

From 1950 to 1992, Tyson’s description tends to fit reasonably well with the evidence in SATR,[75] as already indicated.  Yet while Tyson reports abnormally high rainfall in some parts of the region, especially east Africa, for the 1950s, this does not seem to be the picture for southern Mozambique and South Africa,[76] unless he is referring to the mid-1950s.  Liesegang’s descriptions fit the SATR pattern rather well for the 1950s.  Thus in 1951-1952 and 1953-1954 there was insufficient rain in the Lourenço Marques area, and this corresponds to warm events shown in SATR.  The description of a cyclone and unusually cold weather for 1955 through to 1957 seems to correspond to a strong cold event or La Niña.  This may also be the time of high rainfall for east Africa reported by Tyson.  In 1958-1959, there was fairly good rain in the south of Mozambique, but the center-north seems to have had drought, especially in Nampula, where many died of hunger.  This corresponds to a warm event.  Yet despite the weak onset of a cold event n 1960, very poor rainfall continued in Mozambique.   The cold event strengthened in 1963-1964, yet seems associated with drought in South Africa, but the warm event of 1965-1966 does correspond to poor rainfall in Mozambique.  The cold event of 1966-1967 is associated with exceptionally high rainfall in Mozambique, and a huge maize crop.  The year 1969-1970, corresponding to another warm event, is a year of drought in southern Mozambique.

 

Tyson considers the years 1967-1973 to be a dry period across the southern African region, but the pattern may be slightly more complex than that.  Certainly both 1969-1970 and 1970-1971 are years of drought in Mozambique. Yet 1970-1971 sees the beginning of another cold event, which lasts through to the warm event of 1972-1973, according to SATR.  This cold event appears to be reflected in maize production in central Mozambique, which rose in Manica from 100,000bags in 1970 to 500,000 in 1972.  Yet care should be exercised in interpreting this evidence for one can find dry areas in Mozambique at the same time, also in central Mozambique.

 

Liesegang does not go beyond 1974, the eve of Independence in Mozambique.  Tyson treats the years 1974-1980 as a relatively moist period for southern Africa.  However, SATR would suggest that the main moist period was 1974-1976, with a warm event beginning in 1976.  This needs to be checked against the rainfall evidence.  The year 1976 marks the turning point in the pattern of ENSO events, as discussed in the Introduction.

 

From 1979 through to about 1981, there is another warm event, followed after a very short break by the major El Niño event of 1982-1983.  In southern Mozambique this was experienced as a continuous three/four-year drought.  Tyson has 1981-1982 as the years when most of southern Africa experienced drought, but this is because in 1983 the particularly bad drought extended to whole of Africa.  In drought-prone southern Mozambique, the drought resulted in around 100,000 deaths in Gaza and Inhambane.[77]  There were also small pockets of serious hunger in Swaziland.  In Maputo Province, the drought was immediately followed by a devastating cyclone, Demoina, which also caused considerable damage in Swaziland.

 

Tyson’s description of the improvement in 1985 and the return to drought in 1986-1987 is corroborated exactly by SATR.  Tyson’s judgment that the drought of 1991-1992 was the worst drought in southern Africa in living memory fits extremely well with the time series data from SATR, but both that time series data and the accompanying comparison of the seven strongest El Niño events since 1950 would suggest that 1982-1983 event was a bigger El Niño.  The last event, that of 1997-1998 was also bigger than in 1991-1992, but both the 1982-1983 and 1997-1998 events, subsided slightly more quickly than that of 1991-1992.  The length of the event may well have a bigger drought-inducing impact than its amplitude, when one is dealing with events of such a magnitude. 

 

The social impact of the 1991-1992 event was considerable, with starvation again in southern Mozambique.  This time, with the ending of hostilities in October 1992, it was possible for international agencies to deliver food in time to prevent deaths by starvation.  The drought continued into 1993 in central Mozambique.[78]  While Tyson’s comment that Namibia was not affected by this drought is entirely correct,[79] surprisingly Angola was most affected just across from the Namibian border, where around 250,000 people were at risk.[80] 

 

 

Conclusion

 

The available evidence over about two centuries suggests a strong teleconnection between an El Niño event and drought in Mozambique.  There is evidently a lot more work to be done, especially on the rainfall data already collated by Young.[81]  It would help a great deal if the evidence prior to 1850 could be examined in the light of Quinn et al., who are used by Young to define El Niño events. For future disaster mitigation planning, it would also help to link this evidence to coping strategies, as Young has apparently begun to do. 

 

In general, at least from the beginning of the 19^th century until 1850, where Tyson and Liesegang can be used to gauge the periodicity of El Niño without any direct evidence of the phenomenon itself, there is a strong prima facie case for a periodicity of six years.  From 1850, where Liesegang and Young can be used to relate drought to El Niño, there is perhaps even stronger evidence of teleconnections.  However, from 1850 to 1912, on Young’s account, the periodicity seems to be shorter than the expected 6 years.  Rather it appears closer to 4 years, and there is no obvious explanation for this.  Even if one excludes Young’s Medium events, the interval between events is still only about 5 years.  From 1915 to 1950, where there is no evidence on El Niño events to hand, the periodicity appears to remain at 4 years.  This would need to be checked against Quinn et al., or some other objective evidence of El Niño events.  From 1950 to 1976, it is possible to check Liesegang and Tyson against SATR, and the fit seems very good.  However, it still seems to indicate a periodicity of around 4 years.  The shift since 1976 seems to show very strong evidence of teleconnections, but rather than showing a major change in the periodicity, it is the amplitude and often the length of events which have changed.  The interval still averages out at around 4 years, or less.  This raises the issue of apparent periodicity of 6 years, apparently based inter alia, on coral evidence.  Such matters cannot be addressed in this Appendix.

 

Clearly, the teleconnection between drought and Mozambique can be overstated.  Since southern Mozambique and Tete Province in the center are prone to drought anyway, some of the apparent teleconnections may be coincidence.  It would be easier to form a judgment on that with harder evidence on El Niño for the period before 1850, and for the period between 1912 and 1950.  Nevertheless, Young’s 12 cases out of 17 from 1850 till 1912 do seem to be soundly based.  This implies that, in Mozambique if not for the rest of southern Africa, two-thirds of droughts are related to El Niño.  Tyson’s estimate that one third of droughts are explicable in such terms may nevertheless hold true for the rest of southern Africa.  In the case of Mozambique, the evidence of teleconnections for the other time periods is sufficiently suggestive to indicate that further work is merited.

 

Appendix 2

 

Multisectoral Action Plan

 

The Action Plan was issued in its final version on December 1^st,[82] as indicated in the EU Comments on it,[83] which were circulated on December 10^th.  Apart from the Executive Summary (3 pages) and the main text (22 pages plus 3 pages on funds sought and committed and the budget) there were five annexes.  The Executive Summary gave an overall budget of USD 221.3 million for a strong drought, and USD 204.4 million for a moderate drought.  About two thirds of this was for agricultural measures, as befitted an economy such as that of Mozambique.

 

Main Text of Action Plan

 

The Introduction went right to the point, introducing the concepts of El Niño and the Southern Oscillation, denominating them jointly as ENSO, and stating that monitoring ENSO was extremely important to forecast precipitation several months ahead.  In Mozambique, it stated that ENSO was related to a reduction in precipitation, principally in the Provinces of Tete, Manica, Inhambane, Gaza and Maputo.  Maize yields diminished by more than 50 percent of the average yield.  The province of Manica in years of strong El Niño events was critical for food security, although it only contributed about 15 per cent of total cereal production.

 

Data from INAM and from the [National] Early Warning System for Food Security indicated that Mozambique would have weak and irregular rain during the 1997/98 rainy season, with vast regions being affected.  The probable impact in the five provinces mentioned would be:

 

·         Reduction in agricultural production levels

·         Shortage of water

·         Outbreaks of epidemics

·         Animal deaths

·         Famine

·         Loss of human life

 

Although the effects would be strongest in January and February, they could continue until April, affecting second growing season crops.  A strong El Niño could lead to a reduction in cereal production of 600,000 tons, while for a moderate one it would be 450,000 tons, of which 350,000 would be maize.  For the South, the probability of rains below normal was 55 per cent, while for the Center it was 50 percent, and for the North, between 20 and 35 per cent. 

 

From July to December, the most important measures taken by the GOM were:

 

·         Regular dissemination by INAM and the National Food Security Forecasting System of information on behavior and development of the phenomenon

·         The sending of alerts from different central bodies to their respective provincial subsidiaries, for them to take appropriate measures and to elaborate contingency plans

·         A seminar by MICOA (Ministry for the Coordination of Environmental Action) with the help of the University of Columbia, New York, to study forms of combating drought

·         A conference at Pietersburg, South Africa on Regional strategies for the mitigation of the effects of drought

·         A workshop on meteorology in Harare, Zimbabwe

·         The constitution of an inter-ministerial group for the elaboration of a contingency plan

·         A national meeting of MAP (Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries) at the Pequenos Libombos dam, to prepare the 1997-1998 crop season, taking account of the possible occurrence of drought

·         The reactivation of the Technical Emergency Council

·         Provincial level conferences involving relevant institutions for the elaboration of action plans

 

After describing the main activities leading up to this Action Plan, the plan itself was presented.  Based on the characterization of high and low risk zones, the aim was:

 

1.       Achievement of full potential production in low risk zones

2.       Reduction of the risks of production losses in high risk zones, using drought-tolerant crops and making use of low lying areas and irrigation schemes to guarantee food security.

 

It consisted of eight sections, followed by Recommendations: 

 

 

1.       Agriculture

 

The current upward trend in agricultural production could be reversed, given that it was almost entirely based on rain fed agriculture.  The drought could also compromise the current attempts to rebuild the country’s cattle population.[84] The lack of drinking points because of the scarcity of water reserves and the reduction in pasture areas might increase the number of cattle deaths.  Wildlife and marine life could also be affected.  

 

The measures envisaged were the following:

 

·         National and provincial radio campaigns to raise awareness, in November and December, in Portuguese and 14 national languages.  These were to warn people of the possibility of drought, to indicate ways of minimizing its effects, to control burning[85] with the involvement of local leaders and to make greater use of low lying areas together with adoption of drought resistant crops.

·         Speeding up of the supply of agricultural inputs, given that the crop season had already begun.

·         Given the availability of water for the next crop season in the Chokwe irrigation scheme, it was recommended to clean the main irrigation and drainage canals, of 60 and 40km respectively, and to leave the clearing of secondary and tertiary canals to the local producers.

·         Making available plant propagation material of drought tolerant crops, such as cassava cuttings and sweet potato roots.  The Provincial Directorates of Agriculture and Fisheries were to try to obtain such material by inter-provincial exchange if necessary.

·         Dissemination of forms of treating unripe cassava to prevent people from consuming it without proper preparation.[86]

·         Acquisition and distribution of seeds of drought tolerant crops.

·         Distribution of tools

·         Acquisition, making available and distribution of fertilizers and pesticides (linked to a Japanese aid program KRII).

·         Prioritization to producers’ organizations and co-operatives in the allocation of inputs, to stimulate greater community involvement in the implementation of these measures.

 

The inputs would be financed by PESU[87] in the case of seeds and tools, and KRII in the case of agro-chemicals.  Normal needs in this area were already covered and additional needs were calculated in relation to this (Annex 2).  Depending on the severity of the drought, these inputs might be given away or sold for symbolic prices.  The detailed budget was in Annex 2.

 

For livestock, it was estimated that of some 316,000 in total, about 120,300 were at risk.  A provincial breakdown was given.  The measures to be taken by April/May were the following:

 

·       Advising the private sector to produce and keep hay and to increase use of sub-products and residues of national agro-industry, such as use of cottonseed that was not used for oil.  Meetings of cattle farmers and industrialists would be held to find ways of implementing these measures.

·       Provision of strategic medicines and drugs to kill ticks.

·       Expansion of effective water supply by cleaning existing wells and opening new ones

·       Purchase from cattle farmers of cows of reproductive age that were at risk, to transfer them to areas where they could be fed.  This required the creation of an emergency fund to be allocated to the Fund for Agricultural Development and to be managed by the Provincial Directorates of Agriculture and Fisheries.

 

The majority of current livestock activities were financed by the ADB (African Development Bank) through the Livestock Service Rehabilitation Program.  There were no funding sources for the above emergency measures. About 20 per cent of the cattle whose lives were at risk, that is 24,000, could be acquired. Detailed costs were in Annex 2.

 

 

2.       Agricultural Marketing and Food Security

 

As well as increasing food production, marketing was important for food security.  The principal marketing problems were linked to the degraded rural marketing infrastructure: roads and bridges, means of transport, insufficient number of shops.  There was weak access to credit by merchants, high interest rates and lack of merchants’ experience. High internal transport costs meant that Mozambicans operating in the Center and North opted for exports rather then selling agricultural products to the deficit areas in the South.  In addition, the openness of the country to external trade meant that merchants from neighboring countries had also purchased large quantities of agricultural products in an uncontrolled fashion, undermining Mozambican merchants, who did not have the finances to compete.

 

Assuming that the whole southern African Region would feel the effects of drought, this cross-border purchasing would certainly increase, as a comparatively cheap way to overcome their food deficits.  Examples were given of prices paid by merchants from Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Malawi, but not quantities purchased.  Mozambique was taking measures to prevent uncontrolled exports of large quantities of products, and to dynamize Mozambican merchants, to guarantee necessary stocks if drought were confirmed.

 

The principal conditions to secure this were the following:

 

·       Rigorous customs control to ensure that legal export procedures were followed.  Exceptionally, in this crop season, a 50 per cent tax on maize exports at the estimated CIF price would be imposed  (until the El Niño disaster was declared to be under control).

·       To dynamize the internal marketing process, it would be necessary to ensure that sacks and chemical products were available, that the ICM[88] had the financial means to purchase agricultural products for the food reserve, and that road rehabilitation work was intensified in the areas with greater agricultural potential.  A costed table of the priority roads was given.  Most of them already had ongoing work on them.

 

Food security in current market conditions presupposed that funding was available for sacks and chemicals, that preferential finance was available to the ICM and that a fund was created for the constitution of strategic reserves (physical and financial reserves).  The fund for sacks and chemicals was to be run through the ICM and to be reimbursable. Quantitative and financial estimates were given. The practice of the ICM in attempting to stimulate rural trade was to take out rural banking credits at high interest rates (between 35 and 44 per cent annual interest rate)[89] and use this to refinance small and medium rural traders who were not eligible for credit. The preferential finance was for a reimbursable fund charging lower interest rates, in order to expand this support activity during the expected drought period.

 

 

3.       Monitoring of ENSO

 

The National Early Warning System for Food Security (NEWS), which involved MAP, MICTUR[90] and MTC[91] had the responsibility for furnishing regular detailed information n the evolution of the ENSO phenomenon.  With technical assistance from FAO/WFP it was proposed to monitor the drought on a Regional scale.  A close link would be kept with the Regional SADC network to exchange and render compatible drought information.  This would enable government agencies to adjust this Action Plan in terms of scale and types of intervention.  The following actions were envisaged:

 

·         Meetings to divulge the prognostications for the 1997/98 crop season

·         Study of the implications of the El Niño for precipitation during the crop season

 

 

4.       Water

 

It was assumed that where the impact of the drought was worst there would be a tendency for the population to disperse to zones where the situation was more favorable. Such a situation of [population] saturation could create a more general crisis because the water supply would then be insufficient.  Manual pumps could have their useful life reduced, compromising the policy of using sustainable sources based on local resources, as defined in the National Water Policy. 

 

To design a strategy to cope with the drought, a way of taking account of sustainability was sought, with immediate actions being defined that recognized that not all [newly installed] infrastructure would be fully used once people returned home.  Measures to be taken would take into account local capacity, including the private sector, in the provinces.

 

It was considered that around 3 million people in the affected provinces, or around 15 per cent of the affected population, could move within the country, and according to the 1992 experience they would concentrate in frontier zones.

 

Normally three basic situations could be considered:

 

·         Complete lack of water

 

This referred to places where no underground water supply was available, and in which aid could only be of a temporary character, rather then construction of wells.  Such aid could not be sustained for very long, requiring as it did costs of transport, storage, fuel and human resources. 

 

·         Water at great depth

 

This implied construction of mechanical pump wells, on the assumption that drought considerably lowered the water table.

 

·         Population movement

 

Part of the population could move to the most secure zones, the low-lying ones, which would increase demand for potable water.  New sources would need to be created.

 

It was proposed to build 300 new mechanical pump wells, and a breakdown was given for the six provinces. Tanks with a minimum capacity of 8 cubic meters would be acquired for the most critical zones, assuming that there would be some resistance to moving.[92]  A provincial distribution of 55 tanks was given.  This implied a fund to hire tractors and trucks.  Tables showing the needs were in Annex 3.

 

 

5.       Health

 

The lack of water could have diverse effects on transmissible diseases, namely cholera, dysentery, conjunctivitis, trachoma, dermatoses/sarna, and bubonic plague.  The lack of food could raise the prevalence of nutritional illnesses and cassava poisoning. The following health measures were envisaged:

 

·         Reinforcement of epidemiological and nutritional vigilance.

·         Establishment of norms to control epidemics and for nutritional supplementation and rehabilitation

·         Training of health personnel

·         Preparation of medicine and reagent stocks

·         Reinforcement of the programs of Maternal Infant Health, of PAV (Enlarged Vaccination Program) and others

·         Reinforcement of the SIS (Health Information System)

·         Strengthening of laboratories

 

 

6.       Ministry of the Interior

 

Actions to be carried out over one year included the following:

 

·       Using the water trucks of the fire brigades to aid populations most in need of water.  Costs of fuel, engine oil and rations for firemen were given.  

·       Police activities. Costs were given.

·       Training of brigades to raise awareness among the population of the danger of land collapsing where wells were very deep, and of the need to have a water supply for fires, given that during droughts the speed of fire spreading was greater.  Costs for TV and radio dissemination were given, as were costs for auxiliary equipment.[93]

 

 

7.       State Administration

 

The Ministry of State Administration had already on September 23^rd 1997 sent an alert to all provincial governments informing them of the El Niño and advising them to take preventive measures.

 

 

8.       DPCCN

 

The expected food deficit implied that around 600,000 tons of food would be needed, of which around 38 per cent or 228,000 tons would be needed for humanitarian assistance to 3.8 million people potentially at risk at least until the next harvest.  The remaining 62 per cent was for normal commercial distribution in zones where the El Niño event affected agricultural yields.

 

For contingency planning, it was considered that some 30 percent of the above figure, that is 1,140,000 people, should be the basis of estimates for immediate emergency needs whether in food aid or other aid goods. The cost would be USD 23.3 million (Annex 4). 

 

Transport was being planned to try to avoid the need for an expensive air bridge although there would be access problems whose solution had been presented in the agricultural component of the plan.  This implied that part of the humanitarian assistance would consist of Food for Work schemes to rehabilitate roads.  Both private and DPCCN transport facilities were available, despite the fact that the DPCCN fleet required funds to rehabilitate vehicles, to provide spare parts and other consumables.

 

In terms of warehousing, the DPCCN had a capacity of 75,000 tons of which 20 per cent were in the North of the country, 45 per cent in the Center and 35 per cent in the South.  An additional 128,000 tons’ capacity was available through the ICM. This was considered sufficient capacity to cope with the El Niño event. Given that some of this infrastructure had been damaged during the war, financial resources would be necessary for rehabilitation and to manage the operational warehousing costs (Table 1, Annex 4).

 

There had been a Pre-Project on the National Policy for the Management of Natural Disasters, which had identified that training was necessary in the DPCCN for institutional capacity building.  The cost would be USD 1 million.  Costs of creating an immediate response capacity were given in Annex 4.  The DPCCN would continue to ensure the monitoring of the progress of the El Niño phenomenon, whether through the central and local CTE (Technical Emergency Committees), or work in partnership with specialized UN agencies, donors and NGOs, developing mainly:

 

·         Collection, processing and dissemination of information for prevention and mitigation of drought effects

·         Continuous education and awareness raising of all segments of society to develop actions necessary to develop concrete actions to reduce the impact of the drought under different scenarios.

·         Creation of prompt response capacity and of volunteer groups keeping in mind the responsibilities of local communities in the prevention of natural disasters (Annex 4).

 

 

Recommendations

 

Considering that the socio-economic impact of the natural disaster could be short or long term and with dramatic effects, anticipatory measures were urged. These are the following: 

 

·         Raising the awareness of populations, using among other means radio and television

·         Improvement of management of water resources, establishing bases of understanding with neighboring countries for the reciprocal use of waters from international rivers and for use of dams

·         Efficient use of low-lying zones and irrigation schemes, including the Chokwe irrigation scheme.

·         Acquisition and distribution of agricultural inputs for arable farming and livestock, namely seeds of drought-tolerant and quick-growing crops and varieties; agricultural tools; fertilizers and pesticides; veterinary drugs and medicines; phyto-sanitary equipment for irrigation

·         Acquisition and transfer of livestock at risk and rehabilitation of livestock infrastructure

·         Guarantee and supply of food and other goods for humanitarian assistance to affected populations

·         Creation of operational reserve stocks to a minimum total of 100,000 tons of maize and beans

·         Creation of a special financial fund for importation of food and other essential goods.  This fund would have to envisage the timely payment of CPF (Counterpart Funds) by those using it.

·         The advancing to the ICM of reimbursable funds for the purchase of marketing goods (sacks, chemical products and others).

·         The concession of preferential financing to the ICM via the state budget and banks

·         Making more flexible the mechanisms of importation and distribution of goods destined to minimize the impact of the drought

·         Reorientation as the situation developed of the use of food aid funds to be conceded by the donor community for the acquisition of wheat, targeting them for acquiring other products of higher priority at this time

·         Acceleration of the implementation of preventive measures against the uncontrolled exportation of food and the creation of measures to dynamize the marketing by internal economic actors to guarantee the stocks necessary to the country

·         Exceptional imposition during the present crop season of an export tax of 50 per cent on the CIF price

 

 

Technical Annexes

 

It is proposed to examine the annexes, since they would be thought to form the technical basis of the Action Plan, which would indicate how feasible it was. 

 

The first annex, of 11 pages, consisted of a logical framework (logframe) analysis of the activities of all the Mozambican government agencies involved in the plan’s proposed implementation.  However, the timing of some of the actions was left blank, raising the question of how much of an operational plan this was, and also raising the issue of whether the various agencies had decided how to avoid time conflicts in the use of their limited resources.  Similarly some of the costs were unspecified, which meant that budgetary totals for some parts of the plan were not filled for the logframe analysis.  Nevertheless the overall basic coherence of the plan seemed to be shown by the logframe analysis, allowing for the fact that there were many uncertainties as to the impact of the El Niño event.

 

The second annex, 12 pages long, consisted of a provincial breakdown of the proposed seed distribution, by crop, in US dollars.  It also contained similar proposals for distribution of cassava cuttings, sweet potato roots and other seeds, and for agricultural tools: hoes, machetes and axes. At the end of this part of the second annex there were two observations: one that 40km of irrigation canals, and 60 km of drainage canals would need clearing, and the other that USD 7,000 would be necessary for customs costs of tools already in the country.[94]  These observations elicited comment from the EU (see below).  This annex also contained uncosted details of agro-chemicals to be distributed: only two pesticides had actual quantities and costs filled in on the table.  This also caused comment, as did other unquantified and uncosted items of clothing and equipment in this annex, and other partly unquantified provincial distribution lists of necessities.  Provincial infrastructural work was quantified and costed, as were medical and veterinary material, and information dissemination and agricultural extension work, but none of these were justified in the annex (although the reasons were given in the main text). The penultimate table in this annex also mentioned a further 1200 hectares of canal clearing, in addition to the 100km mentioned above. The reason for this appearing in the state budget is not entirely clear, since the main text states that this will be left to local producers.  It is assumed that the state proposed to pay for this, but leave the actual work to the family or private farmers using the Chokwe irrigation scheme.

 

The third annex of 9 pages consisted of a series of budgetary breakdowns of the National Water Directorate[95] plan, firstly by the 6 Provinces of Maputo, Gaza, Inhambane, Sofala, Manica and Tete, and then by activity within each province.  It also included a costed provincial list of water gauges and a small logical framework analysis of this part of the Plan.  Strictly, this latter logframe analysis should have been integrated into the overall one in Annex 1.  That it was not raises doubts about the degree of inter-Ministry co-operation in the construction of the Action Plan.

 

The fourth annex was composed of 4 pages, each with a table. This referred to the DPCCN part of the Action Plan.  The first table showed a projection of the zones and population to benefit from aid.  It covered all ten provinces, and gave a total affected of 1,140,000, of whom 40,000 were expected to be displaced. The first figure corresponds to that given in the main text, while the second does not appear there, so the basis of this estimate is not clear. The second table concerned food aid needs, in terms of maize, beans and oil.  It was quantified and costed.  The third table showed the needs for free non-food aid for six months in the potential risk areas.  This too was quantified and costed by province, for 5 kinds of consumer goods such as soap and blankets. The fourth table covered tables 2 and 3, in summary format, and linked them to warehousing, transport, education and awareness raising, institutional support, and monitoring and supervision.  The latter were all costed but not quantified.

 

The fifth and final annex was a single logical framework analysis table of meteorological work, which was quantified and costed. 

 

Even from this preliminary description, it is evident that in some parts of the background work for the Action Plan, as indicated by the annexes, there were elements that might give rise to concern among donors, since they did not all seem to be fully justified or coherently related to each other.  This may have partly reflected the diverse working practices in different government bodies, and the fact that this was the first time that such a multisectoral plan had been drawn up.  However, on the whole this plan was reasonable, given the uncertainties surrounding the event, and the limited resources available to the Mozambican government, which seemed intent on using fully the resources available to it, by rehabilitating infrastructure where appropriate.

 

Discussion of the Action Plan

 

As indicated in the discussion of the flow of information (see Chronology of Response) donors expressed some initial concern when informed of this Action Plan.  The EU[96] was asked to make a written commentary on it, and did so quite quickly.[97]  These comments contain some good points, but others are misplaced.  The main objective of the paper was to provide general comments and suggestions in order to advise the Ministry of Agriculture of some adjustments considered necessary before launching the Government appeal.  There were five general comments and three specific ones, in terms of the headings of the paper, but some headings in fact cover different sections of the Action Plan.

 

General Comments

The paper argued that two issues were omitted in the Plan:

 

·         The Government’s contribution in terms of financial resources available to mitigate drought effects and how much it would represent in relation to the required donors assistance

·         The impact of the prevention measures taken by the Government in rural areas, with additional prevention actions and alert information that would be required. 

 

Both of these points are misplaced.  Firstly, the Action Plan stated, at least in some places, that the financial estimates given were estimated on the basis of what was additionally required over normal state budget expenditure.  Where known, existing donor programs were mentioned and additional costs indicated or reorientation of funds was suggested.  Even if this had not been stated, the EU knew that its own Counterpart Funds at the disposal of the Mozambican government for such contingencies amounted to less than USD 2 million (see Donors Meeting, December 5^th). The USAID CPF were presumably of a similar order of magnitude, which came nowhere near the estimated USD 204 –221 million for the Action Plan.  In this sense the Mozambican government contribution could not have amounted to more than a few percent of the total cost.

 

Secondly, the impact of measures could hardly be known given the uncertainties of the El Niño event itself, and uncertainties about implementation given the meager resources available and the difficulties of evaluating public awareness-raising campaigns.  Expected results were defined in the logframe analysis.  Finer impact analysis was probably impossible given the quality of information available.[98]

 

The paper then argued that there was no reference to the influence of the possible Regional drought in Mozambique, in particular to the demand in the domestic cereal market by traders from neighboring countries.  This is either an astonishing inconsistency within the EC document itself, or it is a demand for more information than the Mozambican Government could possibly supply.  Later in the paper, under the second specific comment, the EC paper itself points out that the Action Plan is very critical of ‘uncontrolled exports of maize.’  This was clearly a reference to demand on the domestic cereal market by merchants from neighboring countries.   So this general comment is best understood as requiring further information on the topic.  However, the very fact that traders were entering the country and leaving without paying excise duties implied that the Mozambican government had no way of collecting statistics on this phenomenon.  Hence it was unreasonable of the EC to expect further comment in the Plan.

 

The third general point was that that the expected affected population (3.8 million) was based on the information from the 1992/93 drought.  It was argued that this was not applicable to current conditions prevalent in Mozambique, for three reasons. 

 

Firstly, because the 1991/92 drought occurred when the country was affected by more than 15 years of a civil war.  This point is quite reasonable in that many of the displaced people at that time had already been encouraged to move into priority districts which were more productive and easier to defend.  However, the drought itself did lead to further unanticipated population movements, for example out of Renamo areas and into the Beira Corridor.  In addition, the actual estimate of affected population is explicitly put at 30 per cent of this 3.8 million in the Plan, that is 1,140,000 of whom only 40,000 were expected to be displaced.  While the basis of the estimate of 40,000 displaced is unclear, this is hardly a simple process of lifting the 1991/92 experience and applying it to a post-war situation.

 

Secondly, the estimate of the beneficiary population should have taken into account the preliminary results of the recent population census (2 million less than expected).  This is a fair point that should be included in future disaster planning, but a proportionate reduction in the less well populated rural areas of the six provinces most likely to have been affected would not have greatly changed the figures, given the margin for error already implicit in them.[99]  

 

Thirdly, the latest information on rainfall between September and December and the planting season for the southern provinces indicated that the crops would be harvested by the end of December with very satisfactory results, which would considerably reduce the expected number of vulnerable people.  The point about the good rainfall was entirely correct, and was corroborated by the December NEWS document on El Niño.[100]  However, the latter still warned of a possible drought in January and February 1998.

 

Moving on from these sub-arguments within the third general point, to the fourth general point, the paper stated that the Action Plan did not indicate which body would undertake the overall co-ordination of the Plan.  What would be the role of the DPCCN in relation to the other government institutions involved?  Would the MAP continue with the co-ordination role?  This is a very good point. It presumably was already a concern within the Mozambican Government, and underlay the pre-project on the DPCCN, which had indicated that institutional strengthening was required.  While the DPCCN has since been reorganized and reoriented as the INGC, the relation between government agencies in disaster management still does not seem to have been fully resolved and may only become clearer as the INGC does actually receive further institutional support. 

 

The fifth point was that the 1998 budget that was then being finalized should identify the necessary financial resources to react to a possible drought.  This was considered essential to create within the Government a response capacity in disaster management.  While such a point is superficially reasonable, it ignores the fact that the Action Plan does broadly identify what would come from existing Ministry budgets for 1997 and 1998, and points to the shortfalls that would require donor support.  The fifth general point then adds that an economic component should be included to review the effects of a drought on the Government’s economic and financial benchmarks.  Again, this is an entirely reasonable point, and should be part of future disaster planning, but it would have had to include estimates for moderate and extreme scenarios.

 

 

 

 

 

Specific Comments

 

1.       Agriculture

 

The required seeds were identified, but no timing was given for the seed distribution.[101] Would the seeds be utilized in the second crop season starting in April/May 1998 or in the next agricultural year (starting in October 1998)?  However, Annex 1 (page 4, section 2.4) did in fact give the time for the distribution of the maize seeds as the first quarter of the 1997-1998 agricultural year, so the timing of bulk of the seed distribution was covered despite the EC paper’s comments. The second crop season is also covered (page 8, section 1).  So this comment seems largely unfounded.  A more pertinent point was that there was no information on whether the seeds would be sold or distributed freely to farmers.  However, the MAP position was almost certainly the same, as for other inputs, namely that this would depend on how bad the drought was. In view of the devastating impact of the 1991-1992 drought, this seems an entirely reasonable position, if only implicit in the Action Plan.

 

The EC paper rightly says that the distribution of hand tools was only calculated for Gaza and Manica, with no clear information as to why other provinces, especially those most at risk, were excluded.  However, the table in Annex 2 does give the quantities and costs for all provinces. It gives the additional quantities and costs only for Gaza and Manica.  While no rationale is given for this, one can guess that the reason is that Gaza is the province most vulnerable to drought, while Manica is the one, which is most crucial in terms of food security if the drought is bad, as the Plan says in the Introduction.  Hence these do seem to be the top priority provinces.  If the other four provinces at risk had also been included, then the charge of just producing a shopping list (made at the donors meeting on December 5^th 1997) would have been more justified.

 

A more pertinent point was that the funding requirement included USD 7,000 for customs duties, which was not acceptable.  This was doubtless related to the continuing difference between the GOM and donors over customs duties on aid in kind, where the GOM position does seem difficult to defend. The EC paper was equally scathing about the use of the word ‘flexibility’ to refer to efforts by the GOM to facilitate imports.[102]

 

The proposal to save cattle by purchasing them and transferring them to areas where they could be fed also elicited adverse comment.  The EC paper rightly asked how the cattle were to be managed and who would take charge of the related management costs.  It also asked who would benefit from this operation.[103]

 

The EC paper also asked what the criteria were for concentrating irrigation construction works in Chokwe.  While no reasons were given, they were easy to guess, namely that Chokwe is in Gaza, the most vulnerable province,[104] and irrigation there, if it led to an increase in production, would reduce the costs of food aid transport.  It would also reduce rice imports for the major cities, freeing up food import funds to concentrate on the more important maize.  The irrigation scheme in Chokwe had been damaged by salinization resulting from the incursion of the sea during the 1992-1993 drought, and was only slowly recovering.  Clearing the canals, allowing the Limpopo River water to irrigate more effectively, would have been a sensible way to speed up the desalination and rapidly improve output in this food-deficit province.

 

2.       Agricultural Marketing and Food Security

 

The EC paper pointed out that the proposed exceptional tax of 50 per cent on food imports was already in force. It rightly argued that this decision should be reviewed in terms of its impact in fostering agricultural production and stimulating local food crops marketing.  However, it is hard to see how the scale of the problem of traders from neighboring countries could be assessed without some sort of customs duty as a means of collecting statistics on the traffic. The rate of 50 per cent might be disputable, but any review would have had to be based on information that would have been difficult to collect by other means.  In any case, if the Plan’s measures to stimulate local marketing were successful, the tax in itself probably would not have had a strong disincentive effect on Mozambican food production in food surplus provinces.

 

The rural roads rehabilitation proposal was criticized for having no schedule of works, and it was stated that it could only be implemented after the rainy season (April 1998).  The latter claim overlooks the basic premise of the Plan, that a drought would probably be taking place, so that road rehabilitation would be feasible in the affected provinces.  The EC paper also asked why these roads were not included within the priorities of the ongoing rehabilitation program.  One answer to that could have been that most of the roads mentioned did have work going on, so they probably were part of the ongoing priority rehabilitation program.  An alternative answer could have been that a drought contingency plan could quite reasonably introduce new priorities that would not be applicable in a normal situation.[105] Either way this EC comment does not seem a very intelligent one.

 

The comments on the ICM were interesting.  The EC paper pointed out that agricultural marketing measures were concentrated in the ICM.  What was its role? Did the government intend to give the latter a monopoly of importation of marketing inputs? However, it seems that a near monopoly already existed.  The ICM had already been providing agricultural inputs by way of an agreement with the importer. [106]  It was argued that this arrangement was not applicable in the presumed drought situation, because of the need to constitute reserve stocks.  In effect, this does seem to be an argument to establish a monopoly for importing and distributing agricultural inputs.  The EC paper asked if the ICM had suitable facilities to constitute the 100,000 tons of operational food reserve stocks.  This was a good question. The DPCCN part of the Action Plan answered it by stating that the ICM had a warehouse capacity of 128,000 tons, and that funds would be necessary to rehabilitate the warehouses of both DPCCN and the ICM.  The cost of this was put at USD 350,000 (Anne 4, Table 4). 

 

The real issue then was whether a monopoly was acceptable. That could have been argued both ways. On the one hand, a monopoly could help overall plan co-ordination by the state in the emergency scenario envisaged, especially since the private sector was so weak in this area. On the other hand, a state monopoly of imports could be open to abuse, as some donors believed had happened in the early 1990s.  Instead of evaluating the merits of such arguments, the EC paper confined itself to a rhetorical question: what would be the role of the private sector in the proposed program?  The honest answer would have been very little.[107]  In that case, measures to ensure that the state monopoly was not abused could have been emphasized by the donors. The valid point that it was not clear what the relation was between the 100,000 tons of reserve food stocks and the 550,000 tons of food imports could have been used to support a donors’ stance of vigilance against potential abuse.  The lack of clarity on the relation between this food reserve and the DPCCN food distribution program could also have been set in such a context. 

 

The paper also makes the very good point that the relation between the DPCCN component of the Action Plan and the WFP Contingency Plan was not specified, although the DPCCN had sat in on all the meetings. The two ought indeed to have been integrated.

 

 

 

3.       The Remaining Components of the Action Plan

 

The EC paper considered that some adjustments were necessary on the water supply and meteorology components, but did not think that they raised major questions. It did not specify what the adjustments were, but did state that assistance to meteorology had to be considered a priority in view of the importance of this institution within a disaster management information system.[108] 

 

The only comment on the health component was that no specific fund requirement was presented.[109] 

 

The DPCCN component was said to have been elaborated on the basis of the operational activities carried out by it in the1991/92 drought.  This appears to be an implicit criticism, in view of the earlier general comment about the interaction of drought and war affecting population movements in 1991/92.  Yet it is hard to see what alternative experience could have been used as a basis for action.  The 1997-1998 El Niño event was forecast to be the biggest of the century, and although the 1982-1983 event had been bigger than that of 1991-1992, the drought in Mozambique had been larger and more intense in the latter event, which may have been the biggest of the century for Mozambique.  Hence it was the closest scenario on which to base any plan, and as indicated earlier was not used mechanically to produce identical estimates of the number of people likely to be affected.   In that sense, the Action Plan seems to have attempted to subtract the number of people displaced by war in its use of the 1991/92 figures, and to have estimated drought displacements alone.

 

The EC paper then stated inaccurately that USD 1.9 million was requested for institutional support.  In fact the figure was USD 1million, and had come from the above-mentioned pre-project, which had been conducted with technical assistance from a consultant. (Check this against interview with Silvano Langa: J-P has notes.)  Thus it was not a matter of empire building (as implied by the “No comments!” of the EC paper) but of responding to perceived weaknesses in the DPCCN.  In view of the above EC comments about the need to build a disaster management information system, this response from the EC to a Mozambican attempt to move in that direction was rather unhelpful.  Constructive criticism would have been more appropriate.

 

The EC paper saw no justification for the Ministry of the Interior component.  However, since fire brigades would probably have been located in major cities such as Beira and Maputo, then they would most likely have been deployed in rural areas of the Center and South.  This is where the danger of uncontrolled burning would have been greatest. Given that all other available water tanks would have been used to supply drinking water, and then this use of fire brigades would seem eminently sensible, in the event that education to reduce uncontrolled burning was not completely effective.

 

 

Conclusion

 

Although the EC commentary makes some very good points, it also has an element of cynical carping at the attempts by the GOM to build its own disaster response capacity.  The fact is that, in conjunction with international agencies, particularly the then ONUMOZ,[110] WFP and FAO (both of which received substantial EU funding), and with NGOs, the GOM in general and the DPCCN in particular had developed a considerable logistical capacity and was able to cope with both a major drought and a war in 1991-1992.  This capacity had been greatly reduced in the intervening period to 1997, but the infrastructure in terms of buildings and vehicles was still there, although in need of repair.  Rebuilding that capacity and strengthening it institutionally would seem a cost-effective approach to disaster management, and would not preclude private sector involvement when the later was sufficiently well developed.

 

Despite some methodological weaknesses, the 1997-1998 Action Plan seems to have been generally sound and robust in the face of different possible scenarios.  It would be worth updating this plan for future El Niño events, as well as developing a comparable one for La Niña (cold ENSO) events. The latter could make use of the experience of the floods and cyclones of 1999-2000.

 

Rather than castigating the GOM for what might seem like an attempt to revive institutions of the past, the use of the DPCCN (now the INGC) and the ICM should have been seen as probably the cheapest and most effective way of dealing with the possible drought in the lead time available since the forecast.  It is somewhat disturbing that the EC commentary which contained an undifferentiated mixture of good and poorly supported points should have been presented to other donors by the EC Delegation as advice that was necessary prior to making a Government appeal in support of the Action Plan.

 

Appendix 3

 

Press Coverage of the Weather 1982-1983

 

Domingo

 

The press at that time contains no mention of the El Niño phenomenon.  It does, however, contain a little material on the weather, particularly the drought, and the rare occasions when it rained heavily during this period.[111]  Examples of news related to the drought include a 1983 story in Domingo giving a meteorological analysis of the drought, with detailed rainfall figures, both normal and for 1982, for 19 weather stations in Mozambique.[112]  Another report[113] gives an account of how drought and hunger are killing people and animals, and indicates measures being taken to reduce the impact of the drought. 

 

World Food Program aid is the basis of a short piece in September 1983, by which time the drought has become really serious in terms of famine.[114]  By the second of October the headline seems somewhat desperate.[115]  The 9^th October carries a story on drought in Mauritius, but also has a report on rain to the south of the river Zambezi.[116]  There is a plaintive story on the need for rain to sow crops.[117]  Finally for Domingo in 1983, there are reports of a violent cyclone and an article wondering if the rains would begin in November.[118]

 

Tempo

The coverage in the magazine Tempo is limited to a single article, in 1982.  This concerns some 4,000 tons of international food aid channeled through the UN World Food Program to the victims of the drought.[119]

 

Noticias

 

The other main newspaper in Mozambique at this time was the daily Noticias.[120]  For 1982, there are only three reports of relevance.  The first refers to a depression and resultant floods in Quelimane, Zambezia.[121]  The second covers another depression in the same area.[122]  The third concerns how SADCC was planning to deal with the drought in the southern African region.[123]

 

The 1983 coverage is equally thin, and covers only the drought.  Thus the first report for that year covers the high temperatures of around 40C in Maputo, attributing it to air coming from the ‘semi-desert’ zone of Chicualacuala in Gaza.  However, the temperature per se was not unusual for January, judging by the records from 1960 to 1979.  What was unusual was the fact that more than 1,000 chickens per day were dying in each unit of a large chicken farm, because of the heat.[124]

 

The impact of the drought on the center of Mozambique, and the threat to rice production, form the focus of the next report.  Rainfall in Beira for late October to early January was down from the normal 500mm to between 80mm and 110mm, depending on the area.  The effect was seen as potentially catastrophic.[125]  By April the drought was imposing large restrictions on the use of water in the capital Maputo, owing to the low level of water in the river Umbeluzi, in those days the main source of the city’s water supply.[126]  The general picture was abundantly clear by May, where the drought is treated as a catastrophe for the whole of Africa.  A report published by UN ECA (Economic Commission for Africa, located in Addis Ababa) is cited as saying that the drought threatened thousands of lives in the Sahel, Central Africa, and eastern and southern Africa. The report also mentions a team working in Mali, seeding clouds in an attempt to induce rain. As with citations of meteorological sources, this reference to scientific work contains no mention of El Niño.[127]

Appendix 4

 

J. Press Coverage of Weather and Climate in 1997-1998[128]

 

Domingo

 

The weekly newspaper Domingo has greater coverage of the weather in 1997-1998 than in 1982-1983.  January 1997 commences with a story on torrential rain causing damage in the Nampula port of Nacala.[129]    Within days there are reports of serious floods in the center of Mozambique, with the south and north experiencing no floods.[130]  In this case, seven people died, and 14,000 were affected in an area of 11,000 hectares in Sofala.  In Gaza, the rain was not yet a cause for worry, but the Prime Minister ordered coordination of measures across the four Provinces of Sofala, Manica, Tete and Zambezia.

 

These anticipatory measures would have been necessary, for the following week brought a report of 78 deaths from the floods in Sofala, Manica and Tete.  This time the President was going to fly over the affected areas.[131]

 

In July 1997, just before the beginning of the main growth phase of the El Niño event, a cold front was reported to be affecting Mozambique.  This was an anticyclone originating in the Atlantic.[132]  A similar event affected the southern Provinces of Maputo and Gaza in October 1997.  Although this report includes an interview with a staff member from INAM, there was still no mention of possible El Niño impacts.[133]

 

First Domingo report mentioning El Niño:

 

The first mention of El Niño in Domingo appears a week later, in a report concerning a forecast of rising temperatures over the whole country.[134]  It explicitly states that the recent rains could cease by the end of the month because of the El Niño phenomenon, and that a period of drought could ensue.

 

Within a week, there is a report advising people in Vilankulo, Inhambane Province, to increase their cultivated areas to withstand the effects of the drought forecast to ‘assault the country’ as a result of the influence of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation phenomenon.[135]   The El Niño is reported as having begun in March 1997, and the article in effect predicts this as directly leading to large reductions in precipitation, starting in the following month of November.  Vilankulo is picked out for special attention because of the poor agricultural results in the preceding season.  This left the area with only about 57 per cent of its food requirements.  To avoid peasants being taken by surprise by the negative effects of El Niño, the Agricultural and Fisheries district authorities in Vilankulo were running a program in local languages to raise awareness and to counsel people.  Part of the advice included cultivating drought resistant crops, and moving to lower zones.  Implicitly, the latter is a traditional tactic for coping with drought, since access to water by various means is easier in low-lying districts.  

 

The phrase ‘El Niño’ first appears in the headlines in the following week:[136] ‘Drought in Inhambane: has “El Niño” arrived?’  This quite lengthy article reports drought as causing coconut trees to dry up or yield small coconuts, and river levels to be falling.  In some regions people were traveling up to 50 km in search of water.  A shift from normal commercial to drought-resistant crops was envisaged.  Around two-thirds of the Province’s population was reported to be confronting the effects of a long period of lack of rain.  The other one-third was surviving confined to the only area currently fertile, namely the area from the coast to 30 km inland.  Hunger was already reported in some areas without access to fishing. 

 

There is also a box devoted to the national government’s worries expressed during this week about a possible coming drought related to El Niño, thought most likely to affect the south and center of the country.  The government was ready to take measures to minimize eventual problems, particularly food security ones.  It notes drought in Gaza, as well as the more developed drought in Inhambane.  A District Administrator in Gaza is reported as saying that the agricultural season is threatened.  In the far north of the country, in Cabo Delgado Province, Mueda District (normally a food surplus area, even during the 1982-1983 event[137]) was showing signs of drought.

 

The box stresses that up to the present an absolute drought had not been confirmed for Mozambique.  The probability of an El Niño drought was estimated at 33 per cent.  Nevertheless, the Provincial Directorate of Agriculture considered that national cereal production could rise by 11 per cent, because of an effective campaign to distribute seeds and tools to some 200,000 families. 

 

The box then has a succinct and clear section explaining El Niño/Southern Oscillation, using INAM as its source.   The predicted effects of ENSO are then detailed as follows:

 

‘October, November and December

A.                  Center and South of Mozambique – normal to below-normal precipitation.  Yet during October and November it could be above normal at times.

B.                  North of Mozambique – normal precipitation

 

A.      December, January and February

A.                  Center and South of Mozambique – below normal precipitation

B.                  North of Mozambique – normal precipitation’

 

An editorial note then adds factors of desertification not mentioned by INAM as causing climate change.  These are said to include forest fires, both deliberate and accidental, which are changing precipitation patterns, and globally the entire world is said to be suffering from ozone layer depletion of about 2 per cent ‘because of this phenomenon’.  The warming, which is talked about, is a product of the ‘greenhouse effect’, associated with ozone depletion.  One assumes that INAM would not have wished to be associated with this slightly confused account.

 

The next weather related article, in December 1997, concerns a gale leaving sorrow and poverty.[138]   This affected Gaza, and shows that agriculture there had not been suffering as feared in November. However, crops were destroyed by the gale, and some 30,000 chickens were killed.  The following week, there is a report of a district in Gaza, Manjacaze, needing 20,000 tons of seeds, because of the gale.[139]  Interestingly, the District Administrator links this gale, which also destroyed 75 thousand fruit trees, with El Niño.  It was said that El Niño could have various forms of effect, and if this were one of them, it was the only explanation that he had given to the local population. 

 

The final report on weather events from Domingo in 1997 was one about rain in the capital city, Maputo.[140]  It was mainly about the inadequate drainage system in the city, rendering it vulnerable to rain, and about the limited resources at the City Council’s disposal to deal with the problem.  Such articles have been appearing for years, but this one is the first indication of above average rain in the south of Mozambique, the opposite of what was expected for an El Niño event.

 

In 1998, Domingo begins in the second week of January with editorial comment on the heavy rains in a single night of the previous week in Maputo.[141]  The costs were literally incalculable.  The editorial asks why environmentalists, including the Minister for the Environment, were silent.  Did they have no idea of what was happening?  Was this just to be one more excuse for an appeal for aid to the international community?  The truth was that the situation was extremely grave.[142] These rains in Maputo and elsewhere in the country were beginning to throw doubt on the truth of the supposedly scientific theses according to which the effects of El Niño in Mozambique would be a prolonged drought.  The rains which were falling in different African countries, and the recent floods in Somalia led the scientists to admit that El Niño was a phenomenon with unforeseeable consequences, and that it was not known where it would provoke drought and where floods.  ‘We should be prepared to deal with all eventualities.  And we should pray that our meteorologists would know how to interpret correctly the satellite images to which they, like many of us, had access.  We should pray, above all, that they are more scientists and less like politicians.’ 

 

This seems like a classic case of shooting the messenger, although admittedly in this case the messenger got it wrong.   However, the editor seems to have forgotten that the forecast of an El Niño induced drought was of 33 per cent probability.  Still, this reaction corresponds to interview evidence that the fact that it rained did to a certain extent discredit the disaster mitigation authorities. This may have implications for future disaster reduction measures in Mozambique.

 

The bad weather continued, with reports of a major storm in Beira, capital of Sofala Province, the following week.[143]   This strong storm, a tropical depression with winds of 64km/h, according to INAM, had the previous weekend left 4 dead and hundreds of families homeless.  By the Monday, precipitation had been almost 70mm, as against 7.4mm during the same period the previous year.  Surprisingly, the fire brigade had not been called out, and took no initiative of its own.

 

There were no other weather reports in Domingo until after May, when the El Niño was over.  Thus the first report was in July, and dealt with the familiar issue of droughts in Gaza.[144]  Interestingly, the affected area (Manjacaze again) had had no rain for the previous 8 months.

 

By August 30, the headline for the north of Inhambane only is that ‘Drought affects more than 60,000 people.’  People were reduced to eating roots and wild fruits.[145]  Despite the headline, this report covered Gaza as well, and indicated widespread food shortages.  This drought is once again linked to El Niño, whose effects had been projected for the first months of the current agricultural year,[146] in certain regions of the south and center of Mozambique.  Fortunately, El Niño had passed the margin of Mozambique.[147]    The article notes that six provinces were suffering drought at this time, that is in August 1998: Maputo, Gaza, Inhambane, Manica, Sofala and Tete.  Such a pattern is like a belated effect of a strong El Niño.  This report may not seem too easy to reconcile with the pattern shown in SATR,[148] but the latter covers the period from I July 1997-31 March 1998, so it appears that with some exceptions the drought developed between March and August.

 

The last two weather-related articles appear in November and December 1998.  The first concerns rain being provoked by a warm front.[149] The comment is attributed to Mussa Mustafa, head of forecasting at INAM.  This was said to be typical for this time of year. Gaza and Inhambane had almost no rain.  Neither had the central and north of the country, where normally rains began in November. 

 

The final report predicted possible floods for the next three months of January, February and March 1999.[150]  This is explicitly linked to La Niña, and emanates from the Department for the Prevention and Combat of Natural Calamities (DPCCN). [151]   This body changed its name to the National Institute for the Management of Natural Calamities (INGCN).  The prediction that La Niña was about to predominate in the southern region was attributed to INAM.  The southern part of the country was predicted to suffer strong effects of La Niña.  For central and northern parts of the country, normal precipitation was forecast.  Given that floods were possible in the majority of low-lying parts of the country (i.e. the south) the DPCCN, the Red Cross and the Ministry of Public Works and Housing were going to send joint forces to forewarn populations living in river bank zones.

 

The latter report shows that credibility in terms of disaster warning and mitigation had been restored to some extent, at least in the eyes of Domingo.

 

Tempo

 

There was no report on the weather in the weekly magazine Tempo during 1997, which might be thought ironic since its title could mean ‘weather’ as well as ‘time’.  However, in April 1998, there is an article on El Niño.[152]    The title of this lengthy article is ‘El Niño created problems’.  It covers the coastal District of Govuro, especially its capital Mambone.  This District, with a population of some 40,000, is in Inhambane Province. 

 

The article is interesting because it gives an idea of the economic costs of flooding at local level.  These are considerable, and should be borne in mind when planning for cyclones induced by La Niña. In this case of course, it refers to the rains associated with the 1997-1998 El Niño event, and explicitly links this outcome to the warnings of drought delivered earlier by both central and local government.

 

The District authorities for Agriculture and Fisheries had had meetings with the population and explained what El Niño implied for the region.  They foresaw a drought for Govuro, and explained to the population that in the first part of the agricultural season it would be better to use the low-lying areas (baixas).  Some accepted this advice.  When the time came for the expected drought, Govuro was affected by a cyclone followed by torrential rain.  The farming plots (machambas) in the baixas were flooding, with the loss of crops affecting the food reserves of the region.  The baixas were those of both the river Save and the river Govuro.  In Mambone, many people had also lost their houses, cattle and goats, as well as their crops.[153] 

 

Some government aid had arrived, but it did not cover all those affected.  Fortunately there had been no cholera.  Malaria had increased because of the (new) swamps.  The roads were another major problem, after the floods.  They were all graded dirt roads, with one exception.  After the war, the government had made a great effort to rehabilitate the 50-km road linking the District capital of Mambone to the National Highway 1 (which is tarmac).  This had been completed by 1996.  However, within a year problems had begun.   The company contracted to repair the road had used inappropriate soils, which were ruined during the rains.  It took the reporting team 3 hours to cover this 50-km road in a four-wheel drive vehicle.  The result of the crop losses and transport difficulties was that the price of maize was rising.  The crop had been growing well until the floods, which meant the loss of almost 5,000 hectares.  In addition, the poor road seemed to be causing accidents, thereby further worsening transport problems. 

 

The next report on an extreme weather event was in November 1998, well after the El Niño had finished.[154]  The headline was ‘Beira under water’.  This was said by the meteorological services to be due to a depression that had formed off the coast of Sofala Province.  This had led to an outbreak of cholera, ‘which in Beira has pretty fertile ground’ owing to the weak sewerage system, and the garbage.[155]  The health sector had already indicated that it did not have sufficient funds to take preventive measures for the inhabitants of Beira.  Some local people blamed a recent Italian project to improve the water supply to the city for its worsening health problems, saying that the company had, presumably inadvertently, tapped into old drainage areas (rather than clean water sources).

 

The same issue also has a report[156] from the far south of Mozambique, in the District of Matutuine where the flooding river Maputo had destroyed 876 hectares of crops, thereby ending hopes of food self-sufficiency for that area, at least for this year.  The rise in the river level had occurred between the 19^th and 26^th of October.  It was the result of the South Africans opening the gates on their dam.  This showed the need for coordinated management of the river resources of both countries.  In the current situation, either Mozambique had rivers that were completely dry, or overflowing to the point of calamity.  Both were damaging to the economy of the affected areas.

 

Noticias

 

The first report is a short piece on a cyclone that did incalculable damage to Chókwè.[157] This strong cyclone had struck on January 1^st, and had affected the Districts of Chókwè and Guijá.    An emergency commission had been created to take an inventory of the damage caused.  No human loss life was mentioned.  The source of the report was Radio Moçambique.  This was followed two days later by a fuller account, accompanied by photographs.[158]  The damage had been done in 30 minutes, injuring at least 16 people and destroying 85 hectares of cotton at LOMACO.[159]

 

By mid-January, normal rainfall is noted for most of the country, but damage to roads, rail and housing is mentioned for the Provinces of Tete, Nampula, Gaza and Maputo.[160]  Within two days, the rain is said to have interrupted traffic on National Highway 1 (EN-1) in Sofala Province.[161]  Chimoio, the capital of Manica, was also said to be paralyzed by the rain.  The following day brought the announcement that EN-1 had been closed.[162] 

 

 

B.      Floods in the center of Mozambique

 

These floods are worth covering in detail, since they imply lessons for disaster mitigation, and show how well the Mozambican authorities coped with a weather-related emergency. 

 

 A tropical depression[163] affected the south of the country in late January, and a gale made families homeless in Nampula.  The two events were not connected.  Rain in Zimbabwe had caused the river Pungue to rise, making people in Sofala homeless.  Despite this rain in the south and center, in Cabo Delgado the lack of rain was threatening crops.[164]  By the following day the floods in the Pungue valley were serious, the river having risen 7.34 meters in six hours.[165]  The Zambezi was also rising, forcing the Cahora Bassa dam authorities to discharge water.  The riverbank population had been warned to move.  (Monitoring of river levels is the responsibility of the Direcção Nacional de Aguas: the National Water Directorate.)

 

By February 4^th, Beira hit the headlines with intense rain.[166]  The following day brought another report of the floods in the Pungue valley.[167]  Since the Pungue enters the sea at Beira, that city may also have been feeling some effects in its low-lying areas, but the report concerns the population outside Beira being forced to move to high ground and to trees. Roads were reported cut, and there were 14 dead in Manica and Sofala.[168]  Despite the fact that the subsiding river rose again,[169] the situation was easing somewhat by February 10.[170]

 

Not surprisingly, this flood isolated Beira from the rest of the country.[171]  The river level rose again, this time to 8.1 meters above normal and at least 5 people had died by this time.[172]   The situation in southern rivers was reported to be stable, but in Niassa Province in the north, the rising river had dislodged a bridge, affecting transport to the capital, Lichinga.  By the following day the Pungue had risen again, to 8.9 meters, and the nearby river Buzi was also flooding, allowing crocodiles to attack people.[173]  Not surprisingly, the Prime Minister flew over the Pungue and Buzi rivers at this time.  Meanwhile, the rising Zambezi had isolated the District capital of Mutarara.[174]

 

By the 18^th, the South African army had been called in, saving hundreds of lives.[175]  Zimbabwean transport had also been used.  Despite the improvement in the Pungue and Buzi valleys, there was alarm in the Zambezi valley.[176]  The Pungue, having risen to 8.2 meters, had subsided slightly, and the Buzi had gone down from 8.49 meters above normal to 7.3 meters.  There were 12,832 homeless people, and 5,907 hectares of crops lost in the Pungue and Buzi valleys.  Not surprisingly, food prices in Beira rose.  Cahora Bassa was still having to discharge water into the Zambezi.  The headlines were soon warning that the situation in the Zambezi valley could worsen in the next few days.[177]   This was partly because other smaller rivers were rising, offsetting the reduction in the discharges from the Cahora Bassa dam.  The preliminary count was 25 dead.  South Africa and Zimbabwe were still helping with air, water and land transport.  South Africans in the lower Zambezi had rescued some 350 people the previous day.  The total number of affected people in Tete Province alone was 132,500.   In Manica, 30,000 were homeless, of which 5,000 had seen their houses destroyed, and 1,200 hectares of crops had been practically lost.   Food and other goods were being distributed to homeless families, with help from the Zimbabwean air force.  

 

By the following day, the South African and Zimbabwean air rescue teams, in the four Provinces of Sofala, Manica, Tete and Zambezia had saved a total of some 1,500 people. The South Africans had also supplied goods to the Caia area, and had also supplied hospitals and educational centers in the District capitals.  They were expected to cease operations on this day.  NGOs were also getting organized, providing food, spare parts and clothing among other basic consumer goods.[178]  The Buzi and Pungue rivers were going down, although the Cahora Bassa dam was still having to discharge water.

 

Despite this situation in the center of the country, and even in Niassa, in the north, the other northern Province of Cabo Delgado was still suffering drought.[179]    The roads were also in a poor way, which cannot have helped the Provincial DPCCN[180] to cope.  Some 15,000 people were starving.  A multidisciplinary government team was already there, composed mainly of DPCCN and Agriculture personnel.  Food for work programs was being considered.

 

President Chissano toured the center of the country on February 23^rd having already declared an emergency, and launched an appeal to the international community.[181]  He also wished to stimulate mutual aid among populations affected by catastrophes of this type, and offered a month of is salary to aid victims.  A separate report on the same day gave an overview of the whole period.  Some 400,000 people had been affected.  The city of Beira, the second city in the land, had been totally isolated from the rest of the country, except by air.    Prompt help had avoided even bigger problems, although on the first day of their aid mission, people had fled the South African helicopters.

 

 The international community responded quickly to the appeal from the President.[182]  By now the total number of dead was known to be 78, and there were 25,000 internally displaced people.  Representatives of the international donor community attended a meeting to hear these facts, and to listen to an appeal for almost US $30 million.  Road traffic had restarted at the Pungue, and the Zimbabwean air force was continuing to rescue people from islands, the total now reaching some 1,500. Gifts were coming in from social, religious and humanitarian organizations.

 

The final note on these floods was struck at the end of February, with a report on an air bridge lifting goods into Mutarara, Tete Province.[183]    Road transport via Malawi was also being used.  Some 150,000 people were affected in this District alone.  A Technical Commission of the Emergency was coordinating the work, with the food aid being stored by the DPCCN in Tete city.  Damage included 812 houses destroyed, and a further 342 partly so.  The Malawi Congress Party had also offered aid.  The postscript in terms of weather was provided by another cyclone, Lisette, causing further flood damage in Sofala Province.  There were also floods in Cabo Delgado, but well away from the area, which had previously suffered drought.  That problem had been completely overshadowed by the floods. 

 

External aid started to arrive by March, reaching one million US dollars, a great deal less than the $30 million requested.[184]  However, an evaluation mission composed of DPCCN, FAO and WFP[185] had visited the affected areas.

 

In general, this event shows that Mozambique and its neighbors were able to respond quite well to a major problem.  The lack of military capacity in Mozambique itself reflects the demobilization after the war ended in October 1992 and the impact of reductions in state expenditure resulting from Mozambique’s adherence to a Structural Adjustment program.  As the economy grows, and tax receipts perhaps grow with that, then it may be worth considering augmenting domestic military capacity to deal with such emergencies.

 

C.      Other weather events: the beginning of El Niño

 

Floods further to the north more or less coincided with the March westerly winds that induced the Kelvin waves, which helped, produce the 1997-1998 El Niño event.[186]  It is not clear whether or not there was a connection, that is, whether the westerlies were also crossing the Indian Ocean and bringing additional rain to Mozambique.

 

Nampula soon suffered a similar fate to the Provinces to its south.  Floods affecting this Province made more than 20,000 people homeless, and destroyed thousands of hectares of crops.[187]  In addition, aid to Manica was delayed because of further floods there.  By late March, it was reported that at least six people had lost their lives, and the number affected had risen to 50,000.[188]  Silvano Langa, National Director of DPCCN, who had been to both Nampula and Cabo Delgado, was quoted as saying that people faced serious health problems without medicines, as well as food shortages.  Hydrometeorological services in both Provinces were functioning very poorly, which affected medical work near rivers, and led to people living on river banks being surprised by rising water levels. 

 

Despite all this, in Cabo Delgado northern Districts such as Mueda and Moçimboa da Praia were still suffering drought, and needed additional seeds to sow their crops for the second half of the year.  The evidence on the center of Mozambique showed that the problems had by no means disappeared.  It was now clear that more than 500,000 had been affected, of whom 125,000 needed emergency aid.[189]

 

The following day, attention focused on Cabo Delgado[190], near the capital city of Pemba.  It was not clear what the exact nature of aid from the DPCCN would be, but the regional representative of the WFP had also been present and would present his report in Maputo. 

 

The next weather report concerned the damage done by a gale in the city of Tete.[191]  It had only lasted 15 minutes, and had had a speed of over 100km/h.  The report states that it is not known how to classify this event, but one could speculate that it could have been a tornado.  The same issue carried another report on the effects of the earlier floods in Nampula.  The response by various institutions to the appeal launched by the government had been slow, although 50,000 people had been affected.  The situation in terms of transport was bad, with 22 roads impassible. 

 

In April, the floods in Mutarara, Tete are discussed in an article stating that aid to those affected was proceeding satisfactorily,[192] according to the Provincial DPCCN. 

 

The scene shifts to Chókwè in Gaza for the next report, which fortunately does not appear until May 1997.  The weather itself had not been catastrophic, but poor drainage meant that the intense rain since the beginning of the year had submerged a lot of rice at a time when it should have been ripening.[193]  Interestingly, on the same day there is a report on summer coming early to the Arctic, suggesting that the cause might be the greenhouse effect. 

 

On August 21, the earlier floods of February are discussed in an article reporting that the government, WFP and FAO had met to evaluate the impact of the floods.[194]  This meeting had begun on the previous Monday, and was due to finish the following Saturday.  A major concern was to avoid food aid interfering with normal market exchange of food.  One recommendation would be for aid teams to submit a report at the end of their activities.   People were once again being advised to move from lower to higher ground.[195]  The report goes on to mention the possibility, already announced, of a drought in the south of the country (clearly a reference to El Niño).  Provincial technical teams had already received recommendations to start preventative measures, and multi-disciplinary teams were being prepared, and would soon be seen in the provinces.  Thus evidently the public was being informed of contingency planning.  ‘We are working to guarantee that, if the drought is confirmed in September, we can put into action all the plans drawn up in this period of preparation’ said João Zamissa.  Such plans envisaged, among other things, the provision of seeds of drought-resistant varieties and the identification of water-shortage zones.    

 

D.      El Niño and the forecast of drought

 

If the previous report had only implicitly referred to El Niño, this was very explicit in the headline for September 1: ‘El Niño and drought in southern Africa’.[196]  This lengthy factual article is worth citing at length, since it shows that the most widely read newspaper in Mozambique gave a detailed and generally accurate account of what was taking place, based on a conference that had just finished in Geneva.  This story doubtless set the tone for subsequent reporting on the weather for the rest of 1997, probably for the media in general.

 

The article suggests that the profound climatic changes currently being provoked by the El Niño phenomenon could induce a serious drought in southern Africa, probably worse than the one in 1982-1983, according to more than 300 scientists and experts who had just taken part in a world conference on the climate in Geneva.   Meteorological studies in July had shown that the eastern tropical region of the Pacific was some 4-5 degrees above normal.  Serious storms were predicted for California, and floods for the southern USA, if it did not dissipate.  El Niño was a phenomenon, which caused a climate disorder, giving rise to torrential rains in some regions, and prolonged droughts in others.  UN organizations such as the FAO were monitoring climate developments in southern Africa, including Mozambique.

 

Experts following the course of this El Niño said that its effects were already being felt in the serious floods affecting central Europe, especially Poland and Germany.[197]  If it continued its development, the worst period would be at the end of this year and the beginning of the next, when it would be at its peak.  Apart from the direct threat to human life, it also threatened crops and even the sterilization of soils because of prolonged drought. The health implications mentioned included a possible increase in malaria, and more asthma attacks.    If El Niño continued and reached its peak, drought could affect various other parts of the globe, namely Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and the north of Brazil. 

 

Some weather analysis centers such as the National Center for the Analysis of Climate and Temperature, directed by the main source for this story, Ants Leetmaa, considered that this El Niño could cause more deaths and injury than the one of 1982-1983.  Then the drought, which affected southern Africa, was considered the worst since the one of 1911.[198]  At that time countries such as South Africa and Zimbabwe, which were normally self-sufficient in food or exported it, had to ration their food stocks and stop exports of basic foodstuffs, even being forced to import food.  Despite the lack of precise data, some experts thought that the grave drought affecting North Korea and central China could already be an effect of El Niño.

 

Following on from this, reporting on hunger was presumably taken more seriously, for the next day saw a piece on the specter of hunger in the Pungue valley, Sofala.[199]  The food shortage was attributed to the previous floods, the low humidity afterwards and a plague of rats.   The forecast drought was seen as adding to the problem.  The population, especially the 9,000 most likely to be affected, had been alerted to the problem.

 

This perceived food problem was reflected in a report the following week on the losses in sown area in Tete caused by the earlier floods.[200]  Some 137,000 hectares of production had been lost during the 1996-1997 agricultural year with plagues of rats, locusts and other insects.

 

Later in the month, in Gaza, the Provincial Directorate of Agriculture and Fisheries launched an appeal to NGOs to help deal with the drought, which as already a reality in the northern Districts of the Province.[201]  These NGOs were apparently willing to help make the peasants aware of the issue, and to encourage them to make use of local knowledge of how to access water.  Community seed purchasing schemes were praised. The implications for livestock meant that would need to be move to areas where they could be watered.

 

However, a few days later, the picture from the center of the country, namely Chimoio, the capital of Manica Province, was very different.  Rain and a gale killed and injured people there.[202] 

 

This incident appeared isolated, however, and the next major headline concerned a mission from the WFP to assess the areas and populations at risk from El Niño.  This was a mission covering the southern African region.[203]  The Director of the DPCCN, Silvano Langa, said that early in October a second mission would arrive to evaluate logistical response capacity.  These technical teams were integrated into the Mozambican government’s program to reduce to the minimum the possible negative effects of El Niño, should it be confirmed.  Contact had also been made with other countries’ institutions in the region.  Within Mozambique, there were Provincial action plans, which confirmed inter alia the zones at risk, alternative areas for production, the numbers of the population to be affected, food and water needs, alternative grazing areas and practical actions to make the population aware of the issue.  The same plans defined resources not available locally, and schemes for national mutual support and water saving. 

 

In addition to the Provincial plans, matters being decided centrally included the need to reduce water discharges from dams and food distribution via a system of exchange of services.  All Provinces were drawing up plans, but those most at risk at the moment were Zambezia, Gaza, Tete, Maputo and Cabo Delgado.  The Technical Emergency Council was currently drawing up a drought disaster mitigation plan to be presented to the government at the beginning of October.  The main awareness-raising activities were informing the populations of the need to secure their own food reserves and to be thinking already of cultivating drought-resistant crops. There was already an interest being expressed by international agencies in providing aid to populations that would be affected, and within Mozambique, various social organizations were engaged in awareness raising. 

 

A national-level meeting on drought, opened by the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, was held at the Pequenos Libombos dam, Maputo Province, soon thereafter.[204]  This was intended, inter alia, to look for alternatives to attenuate the impact of drought, which could affect a large part of the country.  The Special Program, as the national action plan was now being called, was to be presented at this meeting.  An awareness-raising film entitled ‘A Man Prepared is Worth Double’ was presented to this meeting.

 

By the end of October, it looked as if the drought had arrived.[205]  The prolonged drought had battered the whole of the interior of the Province of Inhambane, and in addition to having ruined the previous harvest was aggravating the chronic problem of lack of potable water.  More than 600 cattle were also close to death.  The Provincial Governor declared the province to be in a situation of emergent hunger.  This declaration followed the announcement that El Niño could hit the country, and Inhambane was extremely vulnerable to drought.  The last rains had fallen in March.  However, in the Province of Maputo on the following day, the story was of electricity cuts resulting from bad weather (heavy rain).[206]

 

On the 3^rd November, the main weather story was that Rio de Janeiro in Brazil could lose its famous Copacabana beach because of El Niño.[207]  The reason for this attribution is not made clear.  The next day the impact of El Niño on Mozambique was covered in a story on the inside pages.[208]  The District Director of Agriculture and Fisheries at Nhamatanda, Sofala declared himself worried about low rainfall, said to be effectively the effect of El Niño, and outlined the preparations for it.  The months considered most critical for hunger were December and January.  On the same day, the back page, which is always devoted to international issues, carried a story on the effects of El Niño in east Africa. More than 100 people were said to have been killed because of floods caused by El Niño. This was attributed to unnamed meteorological sources, although Kenyan sources are cited later, giving a clear account of the current event. One of the countries mentioned is Ethiopia, where 57 people had died, and more then 9,000 cattle had died. Nevertheless there was also drought in Ethiopia.  Sudanese authorities had warned people of possible floods on the Blue Nile, coming from Ethiopia. Somalia as also affected by floods from the rising river Juba, according to the WFP.   Details of floods in Kenya and Tanzania were also given in this report.

 

The WFP was reported to have completed its strategic thinking for southern Africa by early November.[209]  It was going to evaluate the impact of the El Niño on the world’s poorest countries, to coordinate response strategies and mobilize potential donor resources. An exchange of information between the international community and various Mozambican agencies was intended, to keep up to date on the amount of aid really necessary.  For southern Africa, the WFP had a headquarters in Mozambique, which in partnership with other regional organizations was already analyzing the socio-economic impact of the drought, the consequent food needs, and where the populations would be indirectly affected by the drought.   Logistical structures, current food stocks, and marketing systems were among the other aspects being analyzed.  The countries of the region were mobilizing their disaster reduction institutions, paying particular attention to the movement of reserve stocks and distribution of drought-resistant seeds.  Information campaigns were being launched to alert farmers and to encourage populations to improve their food reserves. Some governments had already begun to increase water stocks by constructing dams and improving rainwater harvesting and conservation.

 

Judging by evidence from Central America, China and New Guinea, the situation could be worse than foreseen.  In southern Africa, the situation was foreseen.  Areas at risk in the event of scarce rain included South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, the center, north, northeast and south of Mozambique, Zimbabwe, large parts of the east and south of Botswana, as well as the south of Malawi and Zambia.

 

Since 1992-1993, the WFP had been working with SADC[210] in a preliminary preventative program to reduce the impact of El Niño.  Using the logistical infrastructure of the WFP, the international community had placed around 11 million tons of imported food at the disposal of affected populations, at a cost of more than USD $4 billion, and benefiting 20 million people.  In 1996, the WFP had helped more than 45 million people worldwide.  The positive experience of the operation carried out in 1992 led the WFP to think that adequate preparations had already been made to deal with the event threatening this year.

 

This report was followed up within a day by a large piece on El Niño and southern Africa, with a map of the likely high rainfall areas in east Africa and drought areas in southern Africa, together with a histogram of the numbers of people affected by drought in southern Africa over the years 1981-1996.[211]  The latter graph, based on USAID/OFDA figures, showed clear peaks in the years 1981, 1983-1985, and 1992-1993[212]. The numbers for 1995 and 1996 were also high.  The article provides an excellent account of El Niño, the Southern Oscillation and La Niña, before going on to discuss forecasting and prevention.  The current El Niño is said to be possibly the largest yet observed, with its area, temperature similarity to the 1982 event and speed of development being mentioned.  The observation network of ships, satellites and stationary buoys is also described. The article states that an El Niño is followed by drought in southern Africa the following summer, with La Niña bringing extra rain.  A drought in the region was expected for the beginning of 1998.  Two common drought development scenarios are described, with reference to the map.  Yet the map itself indicates the probability of drought from November to May as being 77 per cent.  The humidity for Kenya, Uganda and northeastern Tanzania is put at 71 per cent.  The article then emphasizes that a forecast is not a certainty, but is based on probabilities derived from earlier observations. 

 

The probable crop losses are then estimated.  In 1982 such losses had cost more than UD $1billion.  The role of meteorologists and climatologists was to reduce the negative effects of such natural phenomena.  The phenomenon was repeating itself more frequently.  The article stressed in bold type that although the phenomenon of drought had been announced, it was impossible to prove.   As well as reducing harmful effects, there was also the risk that decisions would be taken which would be counterproductive if the drought did not happen.  El Niño was not the only determinant factor. As yet, it was an unanswered question as to what the other factors were.

 

Evidently this as an extremely important article, and it was based on an earlier article written by Roxo Leão for the journal Moçambiente.    It clearly shows that Noticias took El Niño very seriously, and that the readership was being well informed.

 

The point about the drought not happening began to look like a serious one by mid-November. This was a report on flood damage to a district of Maputo city, and the resulting homelessness. [213]  

 

Attention then turned to the international scene with a follow-up story on the floods in Somalia.  At least 1,000 people had died, 15,500 houses had been destroyed and over 10,000 head of cattle had been killed, according to CARE International.  The WFP confirmed that over 200,000 Somalis needed food aid for about 8 months, as a result of these floods. [214]

 

 A storm in Gaza made hundreds of families homeless.[215]  This disaster surprised everyone.  There were no resources available to the Provincial DPCCN to deal with this kind of problem.  Crops had been destroyed. 

 

The next day brought a long report on the vulnerability of Africa to climatic variations.[216]    The Intergovernmental Group on Climate Evaluation based this on a report.[217]  Africa was picked out as the most vulnerable continent, because of the combination of climatic variability and lack of resources, which limited its capacity to adapt.  Recurrent drought, uncoordinated land use and extreme dependence on rain fed agriculture exacerbated the problem in Africa.  The majority of the 19 countries classed as suffering from ’water stress’ were in Africa.  Independently of climate changes, this number would probably grow, owing to demographic growth and the degradation of water reserves.  Prolonged droughts could have serious consequences in terms of food and deforestation. Because of population pressure and conflicts over land use, some coastal regions of Africa would be victims to the sea level rising.  Lakes and lagoons next the sea could disappear in east and central Africa because many countries were building fast-growing cities next to them.   Traditional coping methods would help, but would not be sufficient.  The article also contained evidence on global warming, and problems in the Amazon rainforest.

 

Noticias then returned to El Niño.[218]  The current El Niño was worse then earlier ones.  This was based on a report from the Met Office in London.  Southern Africa would remain very warm over the next few months, and the eastern Pacific was having intense rain that would continue to cause flooding.  An official from the European Union (EU) expected the floods to continue in North America, Europe and in some African countries, such as Ethiopia and Somalia.  The causes of El Niño were not yet understood.   Global warming was nevertheless blamed for the intense rains.  Global warming was the dominant topic at the Kyoto conference, where 160 countries were debating the emission of harmful gases.   There appeared to be an interaction or correspondence between the emission of greenhouse gases and rising temperatures worldwide in the closing years of the century, and both of these were being linked to the frequency of El Niño events.  TV pictures showed global warming was causing rising sea levels in oceans such as the Indian, which were eroding sand dunes that prevented the sea from invading areas further inland.

 

Some two weeks later, Mozambique was said to be one of the SADC countries that would be most affected by El Niño.[219]  This view was attributed to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva.  She indicated that it was not by chance that the WFP had chosen Mozambique as the center from which it would coordinate all its assistance during the crisis.  The event was affecting 27 million people, who could count on less food aid, since the amount available to the international community was half of that available in 1982-1983.

 

The year closed, in terms of weather reporting, with a brief account of torrential rain in the RDCongo. The homeless numbered 5,000. 

 

The return of floods

 

The year 1998 began badly for citizens of Maputo, with heavy rains once again causing serious damage, partly because of the quality of construction in the caniso,[220] the shanty town parts of the city, and partly because of poor drainage in the ‘cement city’.[221]  The event had been forecast by INAM, but no prior measures had been taken.

 

El Niño remained high on the agenda, however, and the next day carried a headline on the worries of Frelimo in Guijá, Gaza, concerning El Niño.[222]  This was about an awareness-raising campaign on drought, asking peasants to profit as much as possible form the recent rains, to avoid future hunger, as had happened there in the 1980s.  Three brigades had been formed for this purpose.   Food reserves had been exhausted the previous October, leading inhabitants of vulnerable districts to move to the District capitals. 

 

By the following week, the heavy rains that had affected many parts of southern Africa had diminished the fears that the region could register a grave drought during the current agricultural season.  The WFP remained on the alert, but was declaring itself cautiously optimistic, despite the fact that El Niño remained strong and would not disappear for three to six months.[223]  The rains were unusual for an El Niño event.  Evaluations by the WFP and FAO would be conducted throughout the region during January to see if drought would occur or not, and whether or not any food aid would be necessary.  Three preparatory meetings had been held the previous week.  The less vulnerable north of Mozambique had not been included in this process.  It was still possible that rains could fail, reducing the harvest by 30 per cent, which would require only small-scale food aid.

 

Within two days, there were two small stories. One was on a depression that was about to affect the center and north of the country.  The other was about rain cutting roads in Niassa Province.[224]  The areas affected by the depression were Cabo Delgado, Nampula, Zambezia and Sofala.  The effects of the depression were evident by the next day, when Beira was reported to have suffered floods since the previous Sunday.  Nampula city was also reported to be isolated.[225]  The storm was reported to have caused death and destruction in Sofala and Nampula.[226]   The latter had been at the center of the depression, which was still causing problems.  In Zambezia, further details of the destruction soon became known.[227]  A Provincial brigade composed of staff from Health, Agriculture and the DPCCN was evaluating the size of the catastrophe, which included 13 dead and 40 missing.  Details on Nampula Province were also given.

 

 By January 30, the constant rains were beginning to cause unease in Cuamba District, Niassa Province, where they were becoming a threat to agricultural production.[228]  There were also pest infestations in the bean plants.  Much more space was devoted to the more densely populated center of the country in early February, where the floods in Sofala were causing continuing damage.[229]  The Pungue had again risen to 8,2 meters above normal, and floods were touching major roads, threatening them with closure.  The Buzi had risen by 8.5 meters.  Dozens of families living on a river island were in danger of drowning.  Others were afraid to try to rescue them in canoes, fearing that panic-stricken people would capsize them. 

 

The full extent of the problem throughout the country became clear by February 7, with a report that the floods were tending to happen in all the hydrographic basins.[230]  The government was said to be worried.  Light vehicles were prohibited from using National Highway 6 (EN-6) near the river Pungue. The National Water Directorate had issued an alert for the Limpopo valley the previous day.  This had been caused by rain in Botswana and South Africa.  The Massingir dam in South Africa was full and was initiating a program of discharges. This affected the Elephant River, one of the tributaries of the Limpopo.  Similarly in Tete, the Cahora Bassa dam was releasing 3,600 cubic meters of water per second into the Zambezi.  The Tete Provincial DPCCN had practically no means of aiding those most likely to be affected downstream at Mutarara.  Roads had been cut in various quite separate parts of Tete Province.  It was also raining in the north of Cabo Delgado.  Crops had been washed away. 

 

The center then quietened down a little, while in the south the state of alert grew.[231]  The Limpopo was rising, and required measures at Chókwè, Gaza, where the level had risen 4 meters above normal.  Nevertheless, the level was falling further up-river.  The levels were not yet worrying for the Limpopo, but the Massingir dam was reported to be about to open its gates again because of energy problems.

 

The Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) was invoked as an explanation for the fact that the El Niño event had not had the expected effects.[232]  An additional cause was said to be the movement of the anticyclone from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean had helped cause the abundance of precipitation, which went against the effects of El Niño.  Normally drought would be expected with an El Niño, but in this case there were other factors intervening, such as the ITCZ.  This was provoking rains in the north, and to some degree in Sofala, and the Atlantic anticyclone was currently positioned over the Indian Ocean.  The latter phenomenon had not been seen for the last ten years, and encouraged rain in the center and south of the country.  The reason for its shift was not too clear, and it was difficult to link this with El Niño.  The source for this was a technician from the National System of Early Warning for Food Security.   

 

By March, the floods were seen as adversely affecting agriculture in Sofala, specifically in Marromeu on the banks of the Zambezi.[233]   This was a new set of floods, but they would not result in hunger, partly because people in that area were used to subsistence hunting.  In any case, the district of Gorongosa in Sofala was expecting a good harvest.

While noting in passing the damage caused by El Niño in Ecuador,[234] Noticias next returned to the topic in mid-March.[235]   The present El Niño was the worst of the century.  The damage would be about double that of 1982-1983.  Specific mention was given to the floods devastating Uganda, Tanzania and Mozambique, as well as Germany and the USA.  In Kenya, 900,000 people had been left without food and surviving on external aid.  UNICEF described this as ‘an extreme situation’.  Malaysia, Thailand and Papua New Guinea were also mentioned in this long descriptive report. The drought in Panama merited almost a paragraph, whereas Indonesia had only a passing mention.  An FAO official in Rome is quoted as stating that the effects of the latest El Niño are more dispersed and devastating than before.  This was true for southern Africa as well.  The FAO had stocked large quantities of drought-resistant seeds on the basis of past experience, but this time it was the excessive rainfall that was causing the damage in southern Africa.  Evidence suggested that global warming was exacerbating the El Niño phenomenon, according to The Observer.   Thawing of the poles was leading to sea level rises, which threatened coastal countries such as Mozambique.  Rains were appearing in areas such as the desert of Peru, where the rain now seemed endless.

 

The next report concerned a forecast by INAM that El Niño would bring a late and mild winter to Mozambique, in the months of June, July and August.[236]  There was no reason for alarm on this.

 

By June, the headline was that El Niño was coming to an end.[237]  This view was attributed to the WMO.  This was followed by another brief summary of its worldwide effects and a description of its four main characteristics: warming of the east Pacific Ocean, movement of precipitation to the east Pacific, decrease in wind speeds and alterations in sea level.  The precise timing of its end could not be predicted, but it was hoped that it would be over by the end of June.  La Niña could replace the phenomenon, but this was not certain. 

 

However, the arrival of La Niña was virtually confirmed within six weeks.[238]  This article contained a reference to the Topex-Poseidon satellite, and was accompanied by a world map showing the likely effects.  It carefully stated that meteorologists were awaiting signals indicating the arrival of La Niña.  Analysis of the Topex-Poseidon images by NASA’s JPL indicated that the Pacific could be in transition, but that it would be premature to declare the death of El Niño and the birth of La Niña.  A more precise indication was expected by the beginning of autumn.  The report then went on to give more details of the Topex-Poseidon data, and an excellent account of how El Niño and La Niña develop.   

 

By August, it was possible to state that the drought of the 1997-1998 agricultural growing season was the main reason for cereal production not achieving record levels.[239]  This may seem surprising, but the drought had been during the second growing season and had been concentrated in Tete, Gaza and Inhambane. Any floods there had been near the major rivers, and later in the growing season.  The Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries stated that the indications of drought were still there, and he called for an improvement in the warning systems.  The current situation called for a focus on the lower risk areas to mitigate any drought.  The major problem for agriculture was access, rather than availability of produce.  This refers to the difficulties of getting food out to market, and of delivering food to areas that are not self-sufficient.  Clearly the infrastructural weakness of rural transport and storage systems was becoming a constraint on further agricultural growth.

 

This season marked the beginning of the Program of Agrarian Development (PROAGRI), which was intended to improve the provisioning of seeds, and monitoring of various climate phenomena.  Commercial products such as cane sugar, cotton and prawn production had grown (the latter by 25 per cent).  In general, fish production had gone up by 13 per cent in value.  This year, however, prawn production had decreased by 10 per cent.  This possibly reflects the impact of loss of mangroves and evidence of over-fishing.

 

The incipient drought of August developed into a serious affair by October, when the DPCCN was reported to be planning food aid deliveries to Gaza and Inhambane.  This amounted to 400 tons of food and water.[240]   Water was the main problem in some southern districts, including in Maputo Province.  There would be a further 2,000 tons of rice from the Italian government later.  The National Water Directorate (DNA) was coordinating actions with the DPCCN to minimize water problems.  The Ministry of Finance and Planning was being consulted on the costs of this operation, and donors were being contacted about this program.  The WFP was being approached with a view to getting its food stocks out of the port immediately to send to the affected area.  A Food for Work scheme would be instituted, but there would be free distribution for the most vulnerable. 

 

In Sofala, the situation was somewhat different in November, where the rains again provoked localized floods in and near Beira.[241]  This was seen as the beginning of the rainy season.  The same issue carried a story on Zambezia, where rains were more continuous then normal in Mopeia.  Six years after the end of the war, there was still no commercial network in the District.   World Vision and the WFP were the main agencies distributing seedlings and seeds.  In the next issue, the final one to mention the weather in Noticias, it was stated that the floods in Beira had killed people and made others homeless.[242]  This shows the continuing vulnerability of this port, the second city of Mozambique.[243] 

 

There was no further press coverage of El Niño in the sources consulted.  TV and radio coverage was not undertaken; following advice on the condition of their archive tape catalogues.

 

Appendix 5

 

Weather Stations in Mozambique

 

The following tables list the weather stations in Mozambique, together with details of their location, elevation, period in use and station type.  The code 9999 under ‘End date’ indicates that the station is currently in use.  Stations have closed down for a variety of reasons, including obsolescence and war.[244]  There is at least one functioning weather station in every Province.  A list of planned new or rehabilitated stations is provided at the end.

 

Maputo Province

Station ID	Station Name	Latitude	Longitude	Elevation (meters)	Begin Date	End Date	STN-QUAL
MP009001	Maputo/Observ.	25D 58M S	032D 36M E	60.0	1910-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
MP009003	Namaacha	25D 59M S	032D 01M E	523.0	1911-01-11	1988-01-31	Climatologica
MP009005	Umbeluzi/Agric	26D 03M S	032D 23M E	12.0	1912-01-01	9999-12-31	AgroClimatol
MP009008	Belavista	26D 20M S	032D 41M E	15.0	1914-01-01	1983-09-30	Climatologica
MP009009	Catuane	25D 50M S	032D 17M E	37.0	1914-01-01	1981-12-31	Climatologica
MP009010	Manhiça	25D 22M S	032D 48M E	35.0	1914-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
MP009011	Marracuene	25D 44M S	032D 41M E	26.0	1914-01-01	1985-07-31	Climatologica
MP009012	Moamba	25D 36M S	032D 14M E	110.0	1914-01-01	1983-12-31	Climatologica
MP009013	Umbeluzi/Partic	26D 04M S	032D 22M E	10.0	1914-01-01	1952-12-31	Climatologica
MP009014	Sabie	25D 19M S	032D 14M E	80.0	1914-01-07	1983-05-31	Climatologica
MP009015	Manhoca	26D 49M S	032D 35M E	40.0	1915-01-01	1915-12-31	Climatologica
MP009016	Magude	25D 02M S	032D 39M E	18.0	1915-08-01	1941-09-30	Climatologica
MP009018	Inhaca	26D 02M S	032D 56M E	27.0	1916-01-01	1973-12-31	Climatologica
MP009018	Inhaca	26D 02M S	032D 56M E	27.0	1981-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
MP009021	Unatze	20D 00M S	030D 00M E	999.9	1919-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
MP009029	Chobela	25D 00M S	032D 44M E	15.0	1941-12-01	1983-06-30	AgroClimatol
MP009040	Tinonganine	26D 29M S	032D 34M E	50.0	1954-07-01	1983-10-31	Climatologica
MP009041	Goba- Fronteira	26D 15M S	032D 06M E	418.0	1954-11-01	1982-04-30	Climatologica
MP009044	Maputo/Maval.	25D 55M S	032D 34M E	39.0	1956-01-01	9999-12-31	Classe 1
MP009045	Ressano Garcia	25D 26M S	031D 59M E	130.0	1956-05-01	1983-07-31	Climatologica
MP009051	Zitundo	26D 45M S	032D 50M E	71.0	1962-07-01	1985-08-31	Climatologica
MP009052	Changalane	26D 18M S	032D 11M E	100.0	1962-12-01	9999-12-31	Classe 2
MP009054	Mazeminhama	26D 27M S	032D 15M E	61.0	1963-11-01	1983-11-30	AgroClimatol.
MP009061	Machava	25D 34M S	032D 34M E	60.0	1969-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
MP009063	Manhiça-Marag	25D 27M S	032D 48M E	100.0	1970-03-01	9999-12-31	AgroClimatol
MP009064	Benfica	25D 55M S	032D 34M E	37.0	1970-07-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
MP009066	Ponta Dobela	25D 31M S	032D 54M E	999.9	1971-02-01	1976-08-31	Climatologica
MP009067	Mapulanguene	24D 29M S	032D 05M E	418.0	1971-09-01	1981-05-31	Climatologica
MP009070	Ricatla	25D 46M S	032D 38M E	55.0	1973-04-01	9999-12-31	AgroClimatol.
MO009072	Bobole	25D 37M S	032D 40M E	66.0	1974-01-01	1974-12-31	Climatologica
MP009074	Matola	25D 49M S	032D 27M E	30.0	1981-02-01	1986-03-31	Climatologica

 

Gaza Province

Station ID	Station Name	Latitude	Longitude	Elevation (meters)	Begin Date	End Date	STN-QUAL
GZ008001	Chicomo	24D 23M S	034D 35M E	4.0	1901-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
GZ008003	Barra Limpop.	25D 11M S	033D 30M E	80.0	1911-01-01	1945-12-31	Climatologica
GZ008005	CanicadoGuija	24D 20M S	033D 05M E	33.0	1912-01-01	1960-12-31	Climatologica
GZ008007	Manjacaze	24D 43M S	033D 53M E	65.0	1914-02-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
GZ008008	Chibuto	24D 41M S	033D 32M E	90.0	1914-03-01	1948-08-31	Climatologica
GZ008010	Macia	25D 02M S	033D 06M E	56.0	1915-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
GZ008011	Massingir	25D 53M S	032D 09M E	100.0	1915-01-01	1964-02-29	Climatologica
GZ008011	Massingir	25D 53M S	032D 09M E	100.0	1970-11-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
GZ008022	Pafuri	22D 27M S	031D 20M E	215.0	1932-11-01	1976-01-31	Climatologica
GZ008032	Xai-Xai	25D 03M S	033D 38M E	4.0	1948-02-01	9999-12-31	Classe 1
GZ008034	Chongoene	25D 00M S	033D 47M E	67.0	1949-01-01	1962-11-30	Climatologica
GZ008035	Maniquenique	24D 44M S	033D 32M E	13.0	1949-01-01	9999-12-31	AgroClimatol
GZ008042	Mapai	22D 04M S	032D 03M E	254.0	1956-02-01	1976-09-30	Climatologica
GZ008045	Praia Bilene	25D 17M S	033D 15M E	20.0	1958-09-01	1987-06-03	Climatologica
GZ008048	Massangena	21D 33M S	032D 58M E	136.0	1960-09-01	1976-09-30	Classe 2
GZ008050	Chókwè	24D 33M S	030D 00M E	33.0	1961-01-01	9999-12-31	AgroClimatol
GZ008051	Chigubo	22D 50M S	033D 31M E	102.0	1961-08-01	1978-06-03	Climatologica
GZ008052	Chicualacuala	22D 05M S	031D 41M E	452.0	1961-09-01	1976-12-31	Classe 2
GZ008062	Combomune	23D 28M S	032D 27M E	195.0	1971-07-01	1977-05-31	Climatologica
GZ008063	Mabalane	23D 51M S	032D 38M E	999.9	1971-07-01	1979-08-31	Climatologica
GZ008064	Maguco	24D 20M S	032D 49M E	43.0	1971-09-01	1976-10-31	Climatologica
GZ008065	AltoChangane	24D 18M S	033D 38M E	999.9	1971-11-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica

 

Inhambane Province

Station ID	Station Name	Latitude	Longitude	Elevation (meters)	Begin Date	End Date	STN-QUAL
IB007001	Cumbana-Jan.	24D 15M S	035D 15M E	30.0	1910-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
IB007002	Homoine	23D 53M S	035D 11M E	130.0	1910-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
IB007003	Inhambane	23D 52M S	035D 23M E	14.0	1910-01-01	9999-12-31	Classe 1
IB007004	Inharrime	24D 29M S	035D 01M E	43.0	1910-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
IB007005	Morrumbene	23D 40M S	035D 22M E	20.0	1910-01-01	1988-07-01	Climatologica
IB007006	Nhacoongo	25D 18M S	035D 11M E	30.0	1910-01-01	9999-12-31	AgroClimatol.
IB007007	Panda	24D 03M S	034D 43M E	150.0	1910-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
IB007008	Panga-Mocod.	23D 40M S	035D 12M E	999.9	1910-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
IB007009	Quissico-Zav.	24D 43M S	034D 45M E	147.0	1910-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
IB007010	Vilanculos	22D 00M S	035D 19M E	20.0	1910-01-01	9999-12-31	Classe 2
IB007011	Massinga	23D 19M S	035D 24M E	109.0	1910-03-01	1982-10-31	Climatologica
IB007014	Inhamuassua	23D 54M S	035D 14M E	37.0	1913-06-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
IB007015	Mocumbi	24D 32M S	034D 46M E	45.0	1913-08-01	1978-10-31	Climatologica
IB007015	Mocumbi	24D 32M S	034D 46M E	45.0	1982-05-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
IB007018	Funhalouro	23D 05M S	034D 23M E	116.0	1915-01-01	1981-12-31	Climatologica
IB007019	Mavume	23D 04M S	034D 24M E	999.9	1915-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
IB007021	Bartolomeu D.	20D 00M S	030D 00M E	999.9	1916-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
IB007026	Burra	20D 00M S	030D 00M E	999.9	1921-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
IB007033	Ponto da Barra	23D 47M S	035D 32M E	13.0	1927-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
IB007041	Mabote	22D 03M S	034D 07M E	143.0	1934-05-01	1984-02-29	Climatologica
IB007046	Mambone	20D 59M S	035D 01M E	4.0	1938-01-01	1987-12-31	Climatologica
IB007058	Inhassune	24D 14M S	034D 51M E	48.0	1971-11-05	9999-12-31	Climatologica

 

 

Sofala Province

Station ID	Station Name	Latitude	Longitude	Elevation (meters)	Begin Date	End Date	STN-QUAL
SF006001	Cherinda	26D 17M S	034D 41M E	999.9	1912-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
SF006004	Nhamatanda	19D 16M S	034D 12M E	57.0	1912-01-01	1979-07-31	Climatologica
SF006005	Sena	17D 20M S	035D 03M E	50.0	1912-01-01	1915-12-31	Climatologica
SF006007	Beira/Observ.	19D 50M S	034D 51M E	7.0	1915-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
SF006009	Chingune	20D 00M S	030D 00M E	999.9	1916-01-01	1922-12-31	Climatologica
SF006010	V.PaivaAndr.	18D 41M S	034D 04M E	300.0	1916-01-01	1977-09-30	Climatologica
SF006012	Chupanga	20D 00M S	030D 00M E	999.9	1917-01-01	1918-12-31	Climatologica
SF006018	Chemba	17D 14M S	034D 35M E	100.0	1923-01-01	1956-12-31	AgroClimatol.
SF006029	Caia	17D 50M S	035D 20M E	30.0	1938-01-01	1977-10-31	Classe 2
SF006029	Caia	17D 50M S	035D 20M E	30.0	1981-07-01	1984-06-30	Classe 2
SF006030	Inhaminga	18D 24M S	035D 00M E	316.0	1938-01-01	1980-12-31	Climatologica
SF006031	Marromeu	18D 18M S	035D 56M E	20.0	1938-01-01	1976-09-30	Climatologica
SF006032	V.G.Arriaga	19D 53M S	034D 35M E	10.0	1938-01-01	1977-09-30	Climatologica
SF006043	Chiou	17D 14M S	034D 49M E	100.0	1952-01-01	1982-10-31	AgroClimatol.
SF006053	Beira/Aeroport	19D 48M S	034D 54M E	8.0	1964-04-01	9999-12-31	Classe 1
SF006055	Mucheve	20D 34M S	033D 49M E	145.0	1963-07-15	1974-06-30	Climatologica
SF006058	Chitengo	18D 59M S	034D 21M E	42.0	1966-01-01	1983-12-31	Climatologica
SF006060	Muanza	18D 49M S	034D 50M E	7.0	1967-10-01	1979-12-31	Climatologica
SF006061	Dondo	19D 37M S	034D 45M E	999.9	1967-01-10	1979-10-31	Climatologica
SF006062	Mazuirgue	17D 15M S	034D 11M E	625.0	1967-12-01	1968-09-30	Climatologica
SF006062	Mazuirgue	17D 15M S	034D 11M E	625.0	1970-09-01	1974-06-30	Climatologica
SF006064	Magadade	17D 37M S	035D 07M E	570.0	1968-01-01	1968-12-31	Climatologica
SF006064	Magadade	17D 37M S	035D 07M E	570.0	1971-09-01	1974-03-31	Climatologica
SF006065	Maringue	17D 58M S	034D 23M E	10.0	1968-11-01	1979-08-31	Climatologica
SF006068	Mafambisse	19D 33M S	034D 37M E	999.9	1971-05-01	1979-10-31	Climatologica
SF006072	Beira-Munha.	20D 00M S	030D 00M E	999.9	1979-03-01	1987-08-31	Climatologica
SF006002	Chiloane	20D 37M S	034D 53M E	10.0	1912-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica

 

Manica Province

Station ID	Station Name	Latitude	Longitude	Elevation (meters)	Begin Date	End Date	STN-QUAL
MN005001	Espungabera	20D 28M S	032D 46M E	824.0	1912-01-01	1978-09-30	Climatologica
MN005001	Espungabera	20D 28M S	032D 46M E	824.0	1982-05-01	1984-06-30	Climatologica
MN005002	Mandigos	19D 00M S	033D 00M E	610.0	1912-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
MN005003	Vila Manica	18D 56M S	033D 28M E	723.0	1912-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
MN005005	Vumba	18D 55M S	033D 40M E	0.1	1914-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
MN005015	Chimoio	19D 07M S	033D 28M E	731.0	1924-01-01	9999-12-31	Classe 1
MN005017	Catandica	18D 04M S	033D 10M E	611.0	1925-08-01	1979-05-31	Climatologica
MN005022	Mavita	19D 18M S	033D 01M E	999.9	1930-10-01	1946-12-31	Climatologica
MN005032	Messambuzi	19D 30M S	032D 55M E	966.0	1947-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
MN005042	Machaze	20D 39M S	033D 22M E	999.9	1967-10-10	1976-12-31	Climatologica
MN005043	Amatongas	19D 11M S	033D 45M E	999.9	1968-10-16	1977-09-30	Climatologica
MN005043	Amatongas	19D 11M S	033D 45M E	999.9	1979-09-01	1980-09-30	Climatologica
MN005043	Amatongas	19D 11M S	033D 45M E	999.9	1983-04-01	1986-12-31	Climatologica
MN005044	Macosse	17D 54M S	033D 56M E	254.0	1967-11-01	1978-07-31	Climatologica
MN005045	Sussudenga	19D 20M S	033D 14M E	620.0	1967-11-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
MN005049	ChimoioAgric	20D 00M S	030D 00M E	999.9	1970-07-01	1975-10-31	AgroClimatol.
MN005049	ChimoioAgric	20D 00M S	030D 00M E	999.9	1979-07-01	9999-12-31	AgroClimatol.

 

 

Tete Province

Station ID	Station Name	Latitude	Longitude	Elevation (meters)	Begin Date	End Date	STN-QUAL
TT003001	Tete	16D 10M S	033D 28M S	149.0	1910-02-01	1952-08-31	Climatologica
TT003002	Tete	16D 11M S	033D 35M S	149.0	1952-09-01	9999-12-31	Classe 1
TT003005	V.CoutinhoVe	14D 34M S	034D 18M S	0.1	1913-05-01	1960-09-30	Climatologica
TT003005	V.CoutinhoVe	14D 34M S	034D 18M S	0.1	1961-12-01	1973-12-31	Climatologica
TT003005	V.CoutinhoVe	14D 34M S	034D 18M S	0.1	1976-07-01	1985-11-30	Climatologica
TT003007	Muchena	15D 40M S	033D 47M S	500.0	1914-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
TT003010	Furancungo	14D 54M S	033D 36M S	0.1	1916-01-01	1974-06-30	Climatologica
TT003011	V.Albuquerqu	20D 00M S	030D 00M S	999.9	1916-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
TT003015	Zumbo	15D 37M S	030D 26M S	343.0	1920-02-01	1961-10-16	Climatologica
TT003015	Zumbo	15D 37M S	030D 26M S	343.0	1961-10-17	1984-12-31	Classe 2
TT003020	VascodaGama	14D 54M S	032D 16M S	0.1	1925-10-01	1971-02-28	Climatologica
TT003027	Fingoe	15D 10M S	031D 53M S	853.0	1932-11-01	1971-02-28	Climatologica
TT003027	Fingoe	15D 10M S	031D 53M S	853.0	1973-09-01	1984-12-31	Climatologica
TT003029	Mulatsi	14D 10M S	032D 59M S	958.0	1934-02-01	1963-07-31	Climatologica
TT003029	Mulatsi	14D 10M S	032D 59M S	958.0	1967-11-01	1969-06-30	Climatologica
TT003032	Mutarara	17D 23M S	035D 03M S	88.0	1936-10-01	1974-11-30	Climatologica
TT003036	Chicoa	15D 36M S	032D 21M S	274.0	1940-02-01	1965-10-31	Climatologica
TT003036	Chicoa	15D 36M S	032D 21M S	274.0	1967-10-01	1972-07-31	Climatologica
TT003037	Casula	15D 24M S	033D 38M S	597.0	1940-08-01	1969-03-31	Climatologica
TT003037	Casula	15D 24M S	033D 38M S	597.0	1973-01-01	1981-09-30	Climatologica
TT003038	Chiuta	15D 34M S	033D 17M S	0.1	1940-08-01	1973-06-30	Climatologica
TT003040	Mungari	17D 10M S	033D 33M S	535.0	1942-01-01	1965-06-30	Climatologica
TT003043	Maue	14D 55M S	034D 20M S	999.9	1945-01-01	1960-10-31	Climatologica
TT003053	Ulongue	14D 44M S	034D 22M S	0.1	1960-09-22	1985-02-28	Classe 2
TT003055	Tembue	14D 53M S	032D 50M S	500.0	1961-12-01	1971-07-31	Climatologica
TT003060	Moatize	16D 06M S	033D 37M S	535.0	1968-01-01	1974-10-16	Climatologica
TT003062	ChangaraFront	16D 50M S	033D 17M S	999.9	1969-01-01	1976-04-30	Climatologica
TT003063	Chioco	16D 25M S	032D 51M S	999.9	1969-01-01	1975-11-30	Climatologica
TT003064	Cambulatsitsi	15D 59M S	034D 11M S	999.9	1969-01-01	1974-04-30	Climatologica
TT003064	Cambulatsitsi	15D 59M S	034D 11M S	999.9	1980-10-01	1984-07-31	Climatologica
TT003065	Magoe	15D 49M S	031D 46M S	999.9	1969-01-01	1979-07-31	Climatologica
TT003065	Magoe	15D 49M S	031D 46M S	999.9	1984-02-01	1985-03-31	Climatologica
TT003066	Zobue	15D 36M S	034D 26M S	64.0	1969-01-01	1984-07-31	Climatologica
TT003068	Mandie	16D 27M S	033D 31M S	159.0	1971-07-01	1979-09-30	Climatologica
TT003070	Estima	15D 44M S	032D 45M S	300.0	1972-05-01	1974-08-31	Climatologica
TT003070	Estima	15D 44M S	032D 45M S	300.0	1979-12-01	1986-01-31	Climatologica
TT003070	Estima	15D 44M S	032D 45M S	300.0	1988-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
TT003072	Songo	15D 36M S	034D 26M S	966.0	1973-01-01	1984-12-31	Classe 2
TT003073	Caroeira	16D 06M S	033D 40M S	999.9	1973-10-01	1974-09-30	Climatologica
TT003074	MBonaSongo	20D 00M S	030D 00M S	999.9	1973-10-01	1974-09-30	Climatologica

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zambezia Province

Station ID	Station Name	Latitude	Longitude	Elevation (meters)	Begin Date	End Date	STN-QUAL
ZB004001	Quelimane	17D 53M S	036D 53M E	6.0	1911-03-01	9999-12-31	Classe 1
ZB004003	Mopea	17D 58M S	035D 44M E	51.0	1912-01-01	1913-12-31	Climatologica
ZB004006	Milange	16D 05M S	035D 47M E	745.0	1914-01-01	1919-12-31	Climatologica
ZB004007	Muabaze	17D 10M S	038D 45M E	999.9	1914-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
ZB004008	Lugela	16D 49M S	036D 55M E	293.0	1914-01-01	1918-12-31	Climatologica
ZB004010	Maquival	17D 44M S	037D 50M E	999.9	1915-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
ZB004011	Porto Belo	17D 43M S	037D 13M E	999.9	1915-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
ZB004012	Ragone	15D 44M S	036D 48M E	999.9	1915-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
ZB004013	Vila Bocage	17D 28M S	035D 20M E	21.0	1915-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
ZB004015	Mocubi	16D 12M S	036D 57M E	999.9	1916-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
ZB004016	Muobede	16D 26M S	036D 45M E	293.0	1916-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
ZB004017	Namacurra	17D 30M S	037D 01M E	50.0	1916-01-01	1984-11-31	Climatologica
ZB004018	Namarroi	15D 57M S	036D 52M E	603.0	1916-01-01	1917-12-31	Climatologica
ZB004024	Alto Moloque	15D 38M S	037D 41M E	563.0	1924-01-01	1985-06-30	Climatologica
ZB004028	Chinde	18D 35M S	036D 28M E	4.0	1927-03-01	1983-08-31	Climatologica
ZB004029	Pebane	17D 16M S	038D 09M E	25.0	1927-08-01	9999-12-31	Classe 2
ZB004032	Errego-Ile	16D 02M S	037D 11M E	533.0	1929-05-01	1966-11-30	Climatologica
ZB004032	Errego-Ile	16D 02M S	031D 11M E	533.0	1967-07-02	9999-12-31	Climatologica
ZB004037	Mocuba	16D 50M S	036D 59M E	134.0	1933-02-01	1985-04-30	Climatologica
ZB004038	Maganja Costa	17D 18M S	037D 32M E	70.0	1933-11-01	1986-08-31	Climatologica
ZB004043	Gurue	15D 30M S	036D 59M E	734.0	1937-10-01	1983-04-30	Climatologica
ZB004049	Lugela	16D 26M S	036D 45M E	293.0	1941-09-01	1981-12-31	Climatologica
ZB004050	Namarroi	15D 57M S	036D 52M E	603.0	1941-10-01	1984-07-31	Climatologica
ZB004051	Milange	16D 06M S	035D 47M E	745.0	1941-11-01	1986-07-31	Climatologica
ZB004052	Mopeia	18D 00M S	035D 50M E	51.0	1941-11-01	1959-07-31	Climatologica
ZB004056	Morrumbala	17D 20M S	035D 35M E	417.0	1946-09-01	1954-12-31	Climatologica
ZB004056	Morrumbala	17D 20M S	035D 35M E	417.0	1957-01-01	1965-12-31	Climatologica
ZB004056	Morrumbala	17D 20M S	035D 35M E	417.0	1968-11-01	1981-05-31	Climatologica
ZB004057	Melela	15D 44M S	037D 29M E	650.0	1947-01-01	1964-04-30	Climatologica
ZB004062	Tacuane	16D 21M S	036D 30M E	343.0	1952-01-01	1971-10-31	Climatologica
ZB004063	TacuaneMadal	16D 21M S	036D 22M E	400.0	1952-01-01	1982-09-30	Climatologica
ZB004065	Lioma	15D 09M S	036D 46M E	736.0	1953-09-01	1974-09-30	Climatologica
ZB004067	Mopeia	17D 59M S	035D 42M E	51.0	1959-10-01	1985-04-30	Climatologica
ZB004070	BrigadadaCha	15D 28M S	036D 27M E	534.0	1965-01-01	1981-12-31	Climatologica
ZB004075	I.Inhassambo	18D 43M S	036D 13M E	999.9	1971-07-01	1984-08-31	Climatologica
ZB004076	Mugema	15D 23M S	037D 33M E	736.0	1971-10-01	1983-05-31	Climatologica
ZB004077	Mucelo	17D 42M S	036D 52M E	3.0	1971-11-01	1979-07-31	Climatologica
ZB004079	Gile	16D 09M S	038D 22M E	170.0	1972-09-01	1985-03-31	Climatologica
ZB004080	Mocubela	16D 54M S	037D 49M E	70.0	1972-10-01	1983-04-30	Climatologica

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nampula Province

Station ID	Station Name	Latitude	Longitude	Elevation (meters)	Begin Date	End Date	STN-QUAL
NP002001	Ilha Moçamb	15D 02M S	040D 44M E	9.0	1914-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
NP002004	EntreRiosM	14D 57M S	037D 25M E	625.0	1916-01-01	1970-05-31	Climatologica
NP002005	Namapa	13D 43M S	039D 50M E	200.0	1916-01-01	9999-12-31	AgroClimatol
NP002006	RibaueAgric	14D 59M S	038D 16M E	535.0	1916-05-01	9999-12-31	AgroClimatol
NP002008	Angoche	16D 13M S	039D 54M E	61.0	1917-01-01	9999-12-31	Classe 2
NP002010	Meconta	14D 59M S	039D 51M E	235.0	1919-10-01	1930-09-30	Climatologica
NP002011	NampulaAgric	15D 09M S	039D 20M E	432.0	1919-10-01	1984-07-31	AgroClimatol
NP002011	NampulaAgric	15D 09M S	039D 20M E	432.0	1987-11-01	9999-12-31	AgroClimatol
NP002013	Nametil	15D 43M S	039D 21M E	171.0	1920-01-01	1986-01-31	AgroClimatol
NP002016	Muecate	14D 54M S	039D 38M E	280.0	1923-10-01	1954-12-31	Climatologica
NP002018	Mossuril	14D 57M S	040D 40M E	15.0	1924-01-01	1974-05-31	Climatologica
NP002018	Mossuril	14D 57M S	040D 40M E	15.0	1980-08-01	1982-10-31	Climatologica
NP002019	Memba	14D 10M S	040D 30M E	999.9	1924-03-01	1956-03-31	Climatologica
NP002020	Moma	16D 46M S	039D 13M E	4.0	1924-11-01	1985-09-30	Climatologica
NP002022	Mongicual	15D 34M S	040D 25M E	35.0	1925-07-01	1976-06-30	Climatologica
NP002022	Mongicual	15D 34M S	040D 25M E	35.0	1980-09-01	1984-11-30	Climatologica
NP002030	Nacala1933-55	14D 33M S	040D 38M E	24.0	1933-02-01	1955-07-31	Climatologica
NP002036	Mecuburi	14D 39M S	038D 45M E	468.0	1939-03-01	1964-12-31	Climatologica
NP002036	Mecuburi	14D 39M S	038D 45M E	468.0	1967-10-01	1980-11-30	Climatologica
NP002036	Mecuburi	14D 39M S	038D 45M E	468.0	1984-09-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
NP002039	Muite	14D 02M S	039D 02M E	400.0	1941-02-01	1972-05-31	Climatologica
NP002039	Muite	14D 02M S	039D 02M E	400.0	1984-09-01	1988-09-30	Climatologica
NP002040	Mutuali	14D 53M S	037D 03M E	570.0	1941-07-07	1986-09-30	AgroClimatol
NP002045	NacalaAgric	20D 00M S	030D 00M E	999.9	1952 01-01	1957-07-31	AgroClimatol
NP002049	Lumbo	15D 02M S	040D 40M E	10.0	1956-01-01	1987-10-31	Classe 2
NP002050	Ribaue	14D 56M S	038D 16M E	535.0	1956-01-01	1967-01-31	Climatologica
NP002051	Nampula	15D 06M S	039D 17M E	438.0	1956-12-01	9999-12-31	Classe 1
NP002057	F.VelNacala	14D 28M S	040D 41M E	45.0	1962-10-01	1976-11-30	Climatologica
NP0020 57	F.VelNacala	14D 28M S	040D 41M E	45.0	1978-01-01	1979-02-28	Climatologica
NP002063	Nacala1972-78	20D 00M S	030D 00M E	999.9	1972-01-01	1978-02-28	Climatologica

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cabo Delgado Province

Station ID	Station Name	Latitude	Longitude	Elevation (meters)	Begin Date	End Date	STN-QUAL
CD000001	Ibo	12D 20M S	040D 36M E	999.9	1910-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
CD000011	Macomia	12D 15M S	040D 08M E	343.0	1932-10-01	1970-12-31	Climatologica
CD000011	Macomia	12D 15M S	040D 04M E	343.0	1973-10-01	1977-05-31	Climatologica
CD000012	Maunda	11D 37M S	039D 30M E	860.0	1932-10-01	1939-05-30	Climatologica
CD000013	MoçimboaPrai	11D 21M S	040D 22M E	27.0	1932-10-01	1939-04-30	Classe 2
CD000013	MoçimboaPrai	11D 21M S	040D 22M E	27.0	1943-02-01	9999-12-31	Classe 2
CD000014	Montepuez	13D08 M S	039D 02M E	534.0	1932-10-01	9999-12-31	Classe 2
CD000016	Murrebue	13D 06M S	040D 32M E	60.0	1933-01-01	1947-09-30	Climatologica
CD000020	Quissanga	12D 26M S	040D 24M E	42.0	1937-08-01	1966-01-01	Climatologica
CD000020	Quissanga	12D 26M S	040D 24M E	42.0	1969-01-01	1981-02-28	Climatologica
CD000022	Mecufi	13D 17M S	040D 34M E	10.0	1938-01-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
CD000024	Mueda	11D 40M S	039D 33M E	847.0	1939-06-01	1974-03-01	Climatologica
CD000028	Palma	10D 46M S	040D 30M E	60.0	1941-10-01	1979-02-28	Climatologica
CD000034	Pemba	12D 59M S	040D 32M E	101.0	1947-10-01	9999-12-31	Classe 1
CD000042	Cuero	12D 33M S	039D 38M E	323.0	1955-01-01	1962-10-31	Climatologica
CD000043	MoçRovuma	11D 25M S	039D 10M E	453.0	1955-01-01	1964-09-30	Climatologica
CD000044	Muidumbe	11D 47M S	039D 55M E	502.0	1955-01-01	1964-11-30	Climatologica
CD000045	NamaraBalam	13D 21M S	038D 34M E	597.0	1955-01-01	1965-12-31	Climatologica
CD000045	NamaraBalam	13D 21M S	038D 34M E	597.0	1970-02-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
CD000046	Namuno	13D 37M S	038D 49M E	495.0	1955-01-01	1968-12-31	Climatologica
CD000046	Namuno	13D 37M S	038D 49M E	495.0	1970-03-01	1982-08-31	Climatologica
CD000046	Namuno	13D 37M S	038D 49M E	495.0	1984-01-01	1986-03-31	Climatologica
CD000046	Namuno	13D 37M S	038D 49M E	495.0	1988-03-01	9999-12-31	Climatologica
CD000048	Ancuabe	12D 58M S	039D 52M E	349.0	1956-01-01	1981-10-31	Climatologica
CD000048	Ancuabe	12D 58M S	039D 52M E	349.0	1983-01-01	1987-11-30	Climatologica
CD000049	Meloco	13D 29M S	039D 10M E	438.0	1956-01-01	1978-10-31	Climatologica
CD000050	Nairoto	12D 24M S	039D 06M E	311.0	1956-01-01	1966-08-31	Climatologica
CD000050	Nairoto	12D 24M S	039D 06M E	311.0	1968-09-01	1983-04-30	Climatologica
CD000051	Nanripo	14D 07M S	038D 48M E	999.9	1956-01-01	1978-04-30	Climatologica
CD000052	Bilibiza	12D 34M S	040D 17M E	32.0	1957-01-01	1971-01-31	Climatologica
CD000058	Nangade	11D 04M S	039D 40M E	260.0	1971-10-01	1974-07-31	Climatologica
CD000061	Meza	13D 02M S	039D 32M E	999.9	1974-01-01	1981-04-30	Climatologica

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Niassa Province

Station ID	Station Name	Latitude	Longitude	Elevation (meters)	Begin Date	End Date	STN-QUAL
NS001001	Maniamba	12D 46M S	034D 59M E	0.1	1932-11-01	1966-06-30	Climatologica
NS001001	Maniamba	12D 46M S	034D 59M E	0.1	1976-03-01	1985-02-08	Climatologica
NS001002	Cuamba	14D 49M S	036D 32M E	606.0	1932-12-01	1974-12-31	Classe 2
NS001002	Cuamba	14D 49M S	036D 32M E	606.0	1977-04-01	9999-12-31	Classe 2
NS001003	Lichinga	13D 18M S	035D 14M E	0.1	1932-12-01	9999-12-31	Classe 1
NS001004	Litunde	13D 19M S	035D 45M E	0.1	1932-12-01	1948-12-31	Climatologica
NS001004	Litunde	13D 19M S	035D 45M E	0.1	1953-10-01	1967-04-30	Climatologica
NS001004	Litunde	13D 19M S	035D 45M E	0.1	1973-03-01	1976-07-31	Climatologica
NS001014	Maua	13D 52M S	037D 10M E	594.0	1941-09-01	1983-11-30	Climatologica
NS001024	Marrupa	13D 44M S	037D 33M E	836.0	1954-06-01	1974-08-31	Classe 2
NS001024	Marrupa	13D 44M S	037D 33M E	836.0	1981-01-01	9999-12-31	Classe 2
NS001025	Mecula	12D 06M S	037D 37M E	0.1	1954-07-01	1966-02-28	Climatologica
NS001025	Mecula	12D 06M S	037D 37M E	0.1	1972-10-01	1986-01-31	Climatologica
NS001026	Cobue	12D 08M S	034D 46M E	502.0	1954-10-01	1964-07-31	Climatologica
NS001028	Massangulo	13D 53M S	035D 26M E	0.1	1955-11-01	1982-12-31	Climatologica
NS001030	Nungo	13D 25M S	037D 46M E	610.0	1956-02-01	1970-06-30	Climatologica
NS001030	Nungo	13D 25M S	037D 46M E	610.0	1973-06-01	1983-09-30	Climatologica
NS001031	Mepanhira	15D 20M S	036D 08M E	681.0	1956-10-01	1976-04-30	Climatologica
NS001035	Meponda	13D 24M S	034D 52M E	520.0	1960-01-01	1963-04-30	Climatologica
NS001035	Meponda	13D 24M S	034D 52M E	520.0	1964-09-01	1984-05-31	Climatologica
NS001040	Majune	13D 28M S	036D 10M E	280.0	1970-01-01	1983-03-31	Climatologica
NS001040	Majune	13D 28M S	036D 10M E	280.0	1985-10-01	1987-03-31	Climatologica
NS001041	MitandeBelem	14D 12M S	035D 56M E	999.9	1970-03-01	1983-06-30	Climatologica
NS001043	Unango	13D 04M S	035D 12M E	0.1	1972-09-01	1985-12-31	Climatologica
NS001045	Mandimba	14D 21M S	035D 39M E	767.0	1973-05-01	1983-04-30	Climatologica
NS001047	Mecanhelas	15D 11M S	035D 52M E	999.9	1973-07-01	1986-12-31	Climatologica
NS001050	Nipepe	14D 02M S	037D 51M E	999.9	1976-11-01	1984-04-30	Climatologica
NS001052	Metarica	14D 19M S	036D 48M E	999.9	1977-05-01	1985-05-30	Climatologica
NS001053	Matama	13D 15M S	035D 23M E	999.9	1977-12-01	1986-06-30	Climatologica

 

Meteorological Stations: New and Rehabilitated/Upgraded

Province	District	District Capital	Belongs to:
Cabo Delgado	Mueda	Mueda	INAM
Niassa	Marrupa	Marrupa	INAM
Nampula	?	?	INIA
Nampula	Angoche	Angoche	INAM
Zambezia	Alto Molocue	Alto Molocue	INAM
Zambezia	Mocuba	Mocuba	INAM
Zambezia	Morrumbala	Morrumbala	INAM
Tete	Angonia	Ulongue	INAM
Tete	Moatize	Zobue	INAM
Tete	Mutarara	Nhamayabue	INAM
Sofala	Marromeu	Marromeu	INAM
Sofala	Chibabava	Chibabava	INAM
Manica	Barue	Catandica	INAM
Manica	Mossurize	Espungabera	INAM
Gaza	Chicualacuala	Vila E. Mondlane	INAM