Torrential Rain

When Manuel de Araujo MP spent the weekend in my constituency, he was on the telephone several times, or texting Mozambique.
The reason is that there are appalling floods there, not least in his constituency as a result of very heavy rains in Zambia and Zimbabwe, so that the enormous Cabora Bassa Dam is overflowing. So far 68,000 have been displaced and 27,000 are now in accommodation centres along the Zambezi River. The head of Mozambique’s national relief agency estimates that the total number of displaced people may rise to 280,000. Manuel is flying back this week. He told me that the inevitable end product of such flooding, on top of all the death and destruction, is a chronic outbreak of malaria. In 2000 and 2001 flooding killed over 700 people.
This sort of tragedy puts everything in our country in context.
Meanwhile, I am personally off to the United States for a few days, so blogging is suspended until next week.
Posted in Africa, Rain 1 Comment »
Bringing Africa to West SuffolkFriday, February 9th, 2007
Consciousness of Africa and its problems has probably never been so high. Many British people try to buy fair trade goods or give money to good causes in the developing world.
In 1992, following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy was founded to assist the fledgling democracies of Eastern Europe. Since then it has tried to assist in democracy building in Africa and elsewhere. It is funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
In the past two years, as a WFD governor, I have done political development work in Uganda, Tanzania and Mozambique. Last summer in Mozambique, I spent time in the central Zambezia constituency of Manuel de Araujo MP. There are huge problems there, all expressed very clearly by the many people we talked to. Mozambique’s economy is doing well, but there are massive difficulties flowing from malaria, HIV/AIDS, on top of poor education and health care facilities.
Manuel is now doing a Ph.D. at the University of East Anglia but this weekend will be in my constituency meeting school pupils and many others. It will be illuminating to hear at first hand what the role is of a politician whose constituents have in many instances such limited opportunities in life, and how he tries to represent their interests.