Mozambique Floods: Aid Workers Face Herculean Task Reaching Starving Communities
In the devastated Gaza province of southern Mozambique, aid workers are engaged in a desperate race against time to reach communities cut off by catastrophic flooding that has transformed the landscape into a vast inland sea. Sky News' Africa correspondent reports from the region where hundreds of thousands of people have been affected by what local officials describe as the worst flooding since 1977.
A Landscape Transformed by Water
The broken banks of the Limpopo River now appear as faint, snaking lines within an enormous expanse of brown, stagnant water that stretches endlessly in every direction. From a Mercy Air helicopter delivering essential food aid to starving communities surrounded by submerged farmland, the view is both breathtaking and heartbreaking.
"This island is too big to be evacuated. But all their rice fields and food is from outside, where it is flooded," explains pilot Samuel Lips as the aircraft approaches Mexinguine. This community, now effectively an island, was not created by nature but by climate change, with connecting roads completely vanished beneath the floodwaters.
The population has been forced to congregate on the few remaining pockets of higher ground, creating overcrowded conditions that exacerbate the humanitarian crisis. "That is a soccer field. Right next to it, completely submerged, is the hospital," observes Sam as he prepares to land on a narrow patch of dry land near a makeshift medical clinic.
Desperate Need for Basic Essentials
The sound of approaching helicopters has become a welcome disruption for isolated communities. Even before the aircraft touches down, elderly residents, teenagers, and children gather eagerly, anticipating the buckets of basic sustenance being delivered.
In the distance, lines of people traverse neighbourhoods transformed into marshes, joining growing crowds at distribution points. "We need food. We, as responders, need food to distribute. We need water. We need shelter because there is no privacy for people. We need medicine," pleads nurse Luis Mauricio outside the two-room clinic serving the suffering population.
Luis is surrounded by patients exhibiting symptoms of infectious diseases worsened by swamp-like conditions. As floodwaters gradually recede, health problems are multiplying alarmingly.
"We are alive, but the floods are troubling us. We are coughing, we don't have a place to live, we don't have food, we don't have water - the water we are drinking is contaminated because of these floods," explains patient Raqualina Tamele, voicing the desperate situation facing thousands.
The clinic is treating numerous children with various illnesses. "Now, we are having a lot of diarrhoea, vomiting and some cases of malaria. It has been persistent," adds Luis, surrounded by nursing mothers and their children. "There are a lot of people, and they are sick. There is no food in this community - it is hard."
Charities Confront Daunting Challenges
Aid organizations are scrambling to access cut-off areas to provide desperately needed support, but face what many describe as a mammoth logistical challenge. In Gaza province alone, at least 400,000 people have been affected, with an area roughly equivalent to Cyprus - approximately 10,000 square kilometres - submerged beneath floodwater.
"Climate change is really impacting a lot on the weather, and we are really feeling it. Being near the sea with a lot of surrounding countries makes our situation even worse," explains Gaspar Sitefane, country director for Water Aid in Mozambique, speaking from Marracuene - a flood-hit district of Maputo province submerged by the Inkomati River.
"Whatever rains come to South Africa to Zimbabwe to Eswatini to Malawi, the water then comes through Mozambique to reach the sea, and when it comes it takes almost everything - people, our animals, our farms - almost everything."
Gaspar's own family home has been flooded, and he notes there are few Mozambicans untouched by this unfolding tragedy. We meet him at a school converted into an emergency shelter, now housing hundreds of evacuees who have lost everything to the rising waters.
Education System Severely Disrupted
The Mozambican government has postponed the start of the 2026 school year by nearly a month due to the widespread devastation. The floods have affected 431 educational institutions nationwide, with 80 currently serving as emergency shelter centres and 218 completely cut off from access. Approximately 420,000 students remain affected across the country.
At the Gwazamutini shelter, children line up to try on clothes donated by teachers. This educational facility now serves as home to over 300 children, with more expected to arrive as additional evacuees reach the region from flooded areas.
Local Leadership in Crisis Response
"The people of the area say that 1977 is the last time we had floods like this," reveals Shafi Sadat, mayor of Marracuene, who has spent days rescuing thousands of people from floodwaters with support from friends and constituents.
He adds: "We got 3,228 people out, and now we have to feed them - in the morning, afternoon and night. There is a lot of damage - in agriculture we've lost everything. We don't have anything. These people live with agriculture."
The scale of destruction to Mozambique's agricultural sector represents a long-term threat to food security, compounding the immediate humanitarian crisis created by the flooding. As aid workers continue their challenging efforts to reach isolated communities, the nation faces a prolonged recovery period that will require sustained international support and attention.
