Zambia has declared a national disaster after floods swept through the Southern African nation and several neighbouring countries, killing at least 45 people and destroying roads, bridges, crops and livestock.
”This is a national disaster and it requires concerted efforts of all of us to solve,” Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa said on state television late on Thursday after inspecting flooded areas in southern Zambia.
Zambia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi have been lashed by heavy rains for several weeks, causing swollen rivers to burst their banks and forcing thousands of villagers to flee flooded homes.
Panicked residents have drowned or been killed by crocodiles as they attempted to cross rivers for higher ground.
With no sign of a let-up in the rainy weather, there are growing fears the flooding could worsen in the coming weeks and devastate the largely agricultural-based economies of the region in the middle of the critical summer growing season.
Heavy downpours are common in Southern Africa in the rainy season, which runs generally from November to April, but the relentless rain is unusual and has caught officials off guard.
Zambia’s government has appealed for $13-million in emergency funds from Western donors to cope with the crisis.
Authorities have closed schools, converting them into shelters for those displaced. Some refugees are living in tents provided by the government and relief agencies.
Mozambique, which has resisted asking for foreign assistance, was bracing for more heavy flooding one day after the amount of water in the Limpopo River, one of its largest, rose to alarming levels.
The government is evacuating people from areas initially deemed safe but now considered dangerous. United Nations agencies have warned the flooding there could be worse than in 2000/01, when 700 people died and another half a million became refugees.
Concerns also are high in Zimbabwe, which has struggled to feed itself amid a deep economic slide that has been marked by chronic shortages of food and fuel, rising poverty and inflation of more than 8 000%. — Reuters