Tackling Energy Poverty

Mozambique Flood Relief

Focus Area: Complex Emergency, Education, Information, Health, Agriculture

Partners: Media Action International, United Methodist Church, local NGOs

Beneficiaries: Communities, Internally Displaced Persons, Farmers, People Living With HIV/AIDS

Project Launched: 2000

In early 2000 cyclones swept across southern Africa leading to three weeks of severe floods which devastated Mozambique. Most of those who fled the rising waters returned to their villages only to face new problems.

Waterborne diseases, like malaria, were rife; children lost at least six months of education and many families returned to find their land occupied by others. With nearly all records washed away there was no way to re-establish ownership. To rebuild any kind of sustainable future, these communities urgently needed reliable information.

Recognising that radio is the quickest and most effective way of relaying important messages, the government made an urgent request for donations of Lifeline Energy wind-up radios to ensure that even remote communities, without access to electricity or other resources, could tune in to vital information.

Through the generosity of the United Methodist Church and the British government's Department for International Development (DFID) as well as private donors, 7,120 Lifeline Energy wind-up radios were distributed to stricken Mozambican communities.

DFID funded a comprehensive communications initiative, coordinated and implemented by Media Action International. DFID also funded transmitters to improve reception of radio broadcasts which covered information on health, sanitation, hygiene, agriculture, the location of landmines, obtaining lost identification documents and title deeds and tracing and contacting lost family members. The timely broadcast of this information was vital to displaced communities.

We are very proud to have been part of what we believe to be the first comprehensive communications initiative where sustainability of information was assured in an emergency situation.

Press Clippings

The Times