The people of Mozambique have to "implement life-saving strategies" during natural disasters, such as the heavy rains that affected the country last week, the Minister of Land and Environment said today.

At an international conference in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, quoted by Lusa, Ivete Maibaze recalled that Mozambique "is being battered by heavy rains that have caused enormous damage".

Between October and April, Mozambique is cyclically hit by floods, a phenomenon justified by its geographical location, subject to the passage of storms and, at the same time, downstream from most of southern Africa's river basins.

During the current rainy season, floods have affected more than 88,000 people, caused the death of 91 people, destroyed more than 1,000 homes, damaged more than 3,000 and destroyed 186 classrooms, lamented Ivete Maibaze.

Last week, Maputo province was affected by heavy rain, which affected at least 39,000 people and caused nine deaths, as well as isolating the municipality of Boane, just over 30 kilometers from the center of the Mozambican capital.

Flooding recurs at this time of year in the country, which is in the middle of the rainy season, but even so, rainfall has been higher than expected.

Ivete Maibaze argued that, in the face of the increase in extreme weather events due to climate change, the people of Mozambique must "implement strategies to save lives" during natural disasters.

On Thursday, an engineer and disaster risk management specialist told Lusa that "negligence" and a "lack of land-use planning" aggravated the impact of the floods in the Maputo region, but that the high "magnitude" enhanced the effect of the disaster.

"We haven't been preparing society and our institutions to deal with this type of extreme situation in the southern region of Mozambique," said Luís Artur.

At today's conference focusing on the relationship between climate change and migration, co-organized by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Ivete Maibaze confirmed that the destruction caused by extreme weather events has led to internal displacement of people.

"Uncertainty and the disruption of livelihoods" are one of the main factors behind the forced migrations of the "most vulnerable rural communities", those most affected by climate change, said the minister.

However, "migration is not properly accompanied by access to employment, decent housing and health and sanitation services" in the cities, Maibaze noted.

The director of the Department of Culture of the African Union (AU), Mozambican Ângela Martins, also said that "extreme weather has an increasing impact on people's lives", particularly due to droughts and crop failures.

"If nothing is done in Africa, it will sabotage the AU's agenda for sustainable development," she warned.