Crux: ACN Director of Outreach Edward Clancy on Mozambique’s need for healing

YAOUNDÉ, Cameroon – Mozambique is still recovering from the effects of two cyclones that hit the country earlier this year, leaving hundreds of people dead.

Cyclone Idai in mid-March brought widespread flooding that created an “inland ocean” and left panicked residents clinging to rooftops and trees for days across central Mozambique, the country’s breadbasket. In the region’s main city of Beira, population roughly 500,000, many rooftops were peeled away.

Six weeks later Kenneth arrived in the northernmost province of Cabo Delgado, shocking residents who had never experienced such a powerful storm. A long swathe of coastal communities was destroyed, and some areas are still difficult or impossible to reach.Without that intervention, aid agencies fear the worst is yet to come. The storm wiped out crops in one of the world’s poorest countries, and millions may have to depend on food aid for survival in the coming year, with the UN estimating 1.3 million people currently requiring emergency food aid.

“After natural disasters like cyclone Idai, it is the national government that has to take a leading role to aid recovery,” said Edward F. Clancy, director of outreach for the pontifical charity Aid to the Church in Need. To read the full story, please click here