Mozambique has strengthened its capacity to deal with natural disasters, and this is beginning to pay dividends as shown by better planning and greater internal cooperation during the 2007 flooding season. The Director of the National Disaster Management Institute (INGC), Paulo Zucula, said the country was better prepared to deal with the flooding caused by Cyclone Favio compared to previous cyclones.

Mozambique ranks 168 out of 177 countries in the United Nations development index, with 54% of its people below the poverty line. Yet the statistics are improving – the economy has a steady annual 8% growth rate and there are megaprojects coming on line.

A powerful tropical cyclone with winds of up to 230 km per hour (144 mph) surged ashore in southern Mozambique on Thursday, uprooting trees, knocking over electric pylons and raising fears of new floods. Cyclone Favio, the strongest to hit the southern African country, is heading towards the Zambezi River valley where it is likely to worsen floods which have already killed some 40 people.

The school year kicks off in Mozambique with more children enrolling for primary school than ever in the past. But, as Ruth Ansah Ayisi of IPS reports, educational prospects remain bleak for orphans like Regina Massango.

Floods in Mozambique have killed 29 people and wrecked thousands of homes after torrential rain and hurricanes swept through the country in the past two weeks, the government said on Wednesday. It said it had warned thousands of people living by the country's main rivers, including the lower banks of the Zambezi which runs from southern Angola across southern Africa to the Indian Ocean, to evacuate.

International child traffickers may be using Mozambique's weak adoption laws to target orphaned children, to the growing concern of the government, said a senior official from the Ministry of the Interior.

The Mozambican Red Cross will begin training hundreds of volunteer workers to manage antiretroviral therapy (ART) for people in their care living with HIV/AIDS. "This training is extremely important and will improve the work of our carers," Paula Macava, the Red Cross Mozambique coordinator of the HIV/AIDS programme, told IRIN.

The Mozambican Human Rights League (LDH) has called for an urgent "integrated and multi-sector methodology" to eradicate or diminish the problems affecting the country's prisons. LDH lawyer Nadja Gomes warned on Wednesday that the way in which the justice sector operates, and particularly the prisons, has led society to distrust the administration of justice.

With a lack of faith in the police seeming to have escalated in certain suburbs of the Mozambican capital, Maputo, citizens have lately resorted to taking the law into their own hands, and meting out rough justice to alleged criminals. This has resulted in a body count of over 20 since August. The ways in which lynchings are carried out range from beatings to burnings, with images of gruesomely burnt bodies becoming a regular feature in newspapers and on television channels.

The United Nations has pledged to provide about $300-million to fight poverty in Mozambique, which is slowly emerging from a brutal 16-year civil war. "The UN will mobilise nearly $300-million for the government's poverty reduction plan to help officials fight poverty in the next three years," UN chief representative in Mozambique, resident Ndolamb Ngokwey, said late on Monday (23 October 2006).

Agricultural science in Mozambique got a substantial boost last week as a US$8.3 million loan was approved by the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development. The money will be used to build two agricultural science and technology institutes that together will be capable of taking 500 students, and to fit them out with furniture, educational tools and equipment.

Donors have again pledged massive support to Mozambique's state budget but lack of progress in implementing the anti-corruption strategy remains a concern. At a recent press conference Deputy Finance Minister Pedro Couto said progress had been made in implementing "some elements" of the strategy, and the government was strengthening the Criminal Investigative Police (PIC) and the Anti-Corruption Unit of the attorney-general's office, the Mozambican news agency, AIM, reported.

Following the civil war in Mozambique a very effective programme was started in which people with weapons could negotiate to exchange their weapons for an item which they themselves nominated and which would enable them to earn a living, for example, a plough, a sewing machine, a bicycle, a typewriter. In some cases a community that had a cache of hidden weapons would hand them over in exchange for a water pump or solar electricity generator for the community.

In this way people were not simply giving up what little they had but were getting something concrete in exchange.

The weapons were collected and cut up by a group of artists who then made the pieces of guns into artworks that are now sold and exhibited throughout the world. One work, "The Throne of Weapons" was bought by the British Museum who also commissioned "The Tree of Life" as part of their 2005 Africa show. Other methods of destroying the guns could be melting and reuse in equipment such as carts and ploughs.

It might be useful for people in Sierra Leone to contact the Mozambicans. See

"Women are born to live and not to die", declared Mozambique's former first lady, Graca Machel on Saturday. Machel, who currently heads one of Mozambique's best-known NGOs, the Community Development Foundation (FDC), was speaking at the opening session in Maputo of a meeting of African Women Leaders, and she was referring to the high rates of maternal mortality in Africa.

In May 2006, the Mozambique Ministry of Agriculture submitted for discussion the document “National Reforestation Strategy” As stated in the document, the bases to promote the establishment of tree plantations in the country involving fast-growing species are set out. Following the pattern present in all the other countries that have introduced large-scale monoculture tree plantations, the proposal comes with the promise of generating jobs and eradicating poverty, contributing to national development particularly in rural zones.

ActionAid is looking to recruit two committed and competent Country Directors in the Africa Region. These are two senior positions reporting to the International Director for Africa, have functional relationships with counterparts in ActionAid and upward accountability to donors sponsors and National Advisory Boards where they exist as well as downward accountability to both their teams, partners and communities in the country programmes.

This paper examines the role of ex-combatants in Mozambican society. It explores the realities the of ex-combatants' lives in terms of how they are coping in a post-war society and what roles they would like to perform. As after 13 years of war Mozambique has successfully avoided a relapse, it provides an interesting case study.

This paper discusses the issue of migrant women and women's integration in Maputo within the context of the new trends of female migration. For a year about fifty women were interviewed in Maputo as well as in the Niassa province. The objective of this study is to demonstrate that women's migration has occurred within problematic decisions and choices for movement influenced by women's emancipation, SAPs and global trends in Mozambique and in the world economy.

"Livelihood insecurity in Manica is growing both in terms of the number of people affected and in its impact, particularly in certain areas where erratic rainfall and ill health and deaths from AIDS have occurred. Growing numbers of people are taking up ever more risky livelihood strategies such as unsustainable livestock sales or the removal of children from school in order to release them for household duties requiring labour or to relieve costs associated with school attendance."

Reporters Without Borders welcomed as an "important signal" the decision to put Nyimpine Chissano, older son of ex Mozambican president, Joachim Chissano, under investigation in connection with the inquiry into the November 2000 murder of Carlos Cardoso, according to a statement, reports The step will allow the justice system to probe the possible implication of the former head of state's son in the murder of the country's best known investigative journalist, editor of the daily Metical, who was investigating a massive financial scandal at the time of his death.