AdvanceAid

admin January 22nd, 2011

Southern Africa is bracing itself for major flooding as heavy rains and some localized flooding across southern Africa from Angola to Madagascar are raising fears that the devastating floods of 2000 will be repeated.

An update produced last week by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that, “All countries in contiguous southern Africa are expected to receive normal to above-normal rainfall between January and March 2011 – northern Zimbabwe, central Zambia, southern Malawi, central Mozambique and most of Madagascar are expected to receive above-normal rainfall.”
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Tags: Angola, Botswana, Floods, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, natural disasters, OCHA, Okavanga, Red Cross, South Africa, UN, Zambezi, Zambia, Zimbabwe

• Southern Africa
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admin January 17th, 2011

We write a lot on this blog about disasters that are perceived not to have happened because they are not covered on CNN – or in the British papers.  Amongst the pernicious effects of this ‘not on CNN’ syndrome are not just the under-resourcing of smaller (and not so small if they are in Africa) emergencies, but the over-funding of the ones that do generate all of the media coverage.

But last week Valerie (Baroness) Amos, who took over as head of OCHA in July last year did something about this by allocating around $84m, as part of the first round of allocations for 2011 from the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), to assist people affected by hunger, malnutrition, disease, displacement and conflict in 15 ‘neglected’ emergencies around the world.

Nearly three quarters of the $84m is going to ‘neglected’ emergencies (as defined by OCHA) in Africa.  And, to some extent, the locations of these emergencies will not surprise – Somalia receives $15m, the largest single allocation, with $11m going to Ethiopia.  Agencies working in Chad will receive $8m, while humanitarian partners in Kenya will receive $6 million to start up programmes for 2011.
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Tags: Baroness Amos, Burundi, Central African Republic, CERF, Chad, CNN, Colombia, DFID, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Iran, Kenya, Madagascar, Myanmar, North Korea, OCHA, Palestine, Somalia, Sri Lanka, UN, Zimbabwe

• East Africa , Great Lakes , Latin America , Middle East , South Asia , South East Asia , West Africa
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admin July 29th, 2010

Opinion is growing that a La Niña phenomenon has officially arrived and this means that disaster response teams probably need to brace themselves for heavier monsoons, bigger and more frequent hurricanes, and angrier cyclones.

“There is global consensus that we are at the beginning of a La Niña, but we cannot pronounce the intensity of the event yet – we have to wait for it to evolve,” Rupa Kumar Kolli, Chief of the World Climate Applications and Services Division at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) told IRIN News.

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Tags: Afghanistan, Australia, Climate change, DRC, Floods, IDPs, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mexico, Mozambique, NASA, Pakistan, Red Crescent, Red Cross, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, WMO

• Americas , East Africa , Great Lakes , Latin America , North Africa , South Asia , South East Asia , Southern Africa
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admin January 10th, 2010

Northern Malawi was hit by a number of earthquakes in the course of December, with 4,600 families needing assistance.  Now Madagascar is bracing itself for the probable arrival of tropical cyclone Edzani, which is being forecast will hit the island on January 14th.

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Tags: cyclone, earthquake, Madagascar, Malawi, UN

• Great Lakes , News , Southern Africa
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admin November 26th, 2009

The island state of Madagascar is the African country where the highest number of people are made homeless by natural disaster according to an analysis of EM-DAT data by Advance Aid.  And this year things could be even worse for the islanders.

The continent’s top ten for the 2000-08 period are listed in the table below:

Average Annual Homeless by Natural Disaster, 2000-08
1 Madagascar                58,964
2 Uganda                      42,108
3 Somalia                      25,889
4 Sudan                        24,253
5 Algeria                       22,444
6 DR Congo                   15,663
7 Mozambique                 8,610
8 Mali                             7,391
9 Zimbabwe                    7,333
10 Malawi                       7,129
Source: EM-DAT

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Tags: cyclone, Floods, Madagascar, natural disasters, Pre-Positioning, Storm

• News , Southern Africa
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