Rescue teams from the United Kingdom, Brazil, and South Africa were called into action to help thousands of people to safety in Mozambique after rising floodwaters brought catastrophic flooding to the country. Older residents in the region have described it as the worst flooding in at least a generation in the African nation that sits on the continent's southeastern coast.
"We lost everything in the floodwaters, including houses, TV sets, fridges, clothing, and livestock — cattle, goats and pigs," Francisco Fernando Chivindzi told the BBC. "Our farms are under water. I am a farmer. I grow quality rice. The floodwaters reached heights we weren't expecting. We have never experienced this level of flooding in my lifetime. We'll restart life from scratch."
While the 67-year-old, a father of nine, was grateful to be on higher ground, he said others in the region resisted the rescuers and clung to treetops and roofs. "We should value life more than the goods," he added.
Chivindzi was among the thousands who had taken shelter at one of six local churches and schools. The shelters have taken in around 4,000 people near the hard-hit town of Marracuene, about 19 miles north of Maputo, Mozambique's capital and largest city. This is just a small sample of the total number of shelters that have taken in victims of the flooding.
Nearly 100 shelters were hosting over 100,000 people in the regions affected by the flooding, according to ReliefWeb, a United Nations-run platform that gathers and shares reports, data, and analysis to support disaster response and humanitarian action worldwide.
The number of people impacted is much larger. "An estimated 616,720 people have now been affected nationwide, with Gaza, Maputo, and Sofala provinces recording the highest impacts," noted a ReliefWeb report.
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"A national Red Alert was declared on Jan. 16 across the entire country to enforce compulsory evacuations and intensify emergency operations as flooding conditions worsened. The updated affected-population figures reflect widespread damage to homes, critical infrastructure, and agricultural land across the hardest-hit provinces, as well as increasing pressures on already stretched response capacities."
Floodwaters in parts of Maputo reached rooftop level. Flooding on one of the city's major highways cut off the capital from the rest of the country.
"Mozambique is facing one of its most destructive flood emergencies in years," according to The International Charter: Space and Major Disasters, a global collaboration of space agencies that provides free satellite data to support emergency response during disasters. "A total of 82,634 houses have been destroyed or damaged, with 123 deaths reported and 101 people injured."
The recent flooding highlights Mozambique's vulnerability to impacts from a warming world. "Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in the world and one of the most frequently and worst affected by natural disasters, the majority of which have a direct link to climate change," officials with the United Nations Development Programme said.
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$200 or more 💰 Mozambique's flooding could be one of the planet's first billion-dollar weather disasters of 2026. The fingerprints of climate change were found on several extreme weather events in 2025. There were 55 billion-dollar weather disasters around the world last year, according to insurance broker Gallagher Re's annual report released this week.
"We continue to endure the growing influence of climate change on global weather patterns and individual events," according to the report. Our overheating planet has contributed to accelerated sea-level rise along Africa's coastlines and to increased crop losses, which have raised food insecurity across the continent.
"The ongoing rise in climate extremes, notably due to extreme heat and drought, is also driving geopolitical concerns, such as a rise in climate refugees," the Gallagher Re report observed in a discussion about Africa. "African climate migrations is an area of increasing scientific study, since the continent is one of the most vulnerable to climate change."
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