Supporting urban recovery after Cyclone Idai Beira, Mozambique

As the focus of the response to Cyclone Idai turns from emergency response to recovery, shelter actors face the all too familiar challenge of defining and implementing recovery programmes that achieve maximum impact with increasingly scarce resources. This is particularly difficult in urban areas that present unique challenges in terms of diversity, complexity and scale with a range of different formal and informal actors and processes. These complexities point to the need for highly flexible responses. 

This paper presents the findings from a real time research project which sought to understand the impact of Cyclone Idai on urban households and communities as well as the options for shelter actors seeking to support their recovery. 

The aim was to provide recommendations to inform the Shelter Cluster response strategy, CARE Mozambique and the COSACA consortium’s shelter response in Beira. With need far outstripping likely financing, direct and indirect support to self-recovery will be one of the ways in which actors can reach increased numbers of Beira’s urban population. Direct interventions see homeowners supported in the repair, retrofit or reconstruction of their houses through the provision of material and/or cash and voucher assistance. Technical support and awareness-raising on safer construction will try to ensure that houses are constructed in a way that is safer than their pre-disaster condition.