A poverty of ideas

Good afternoon. Cyclone Jude touched land in Mozambique this morning, having already caused havoc in Nampula province over the weekend (see below). And Mozambique is particularly ill-equipped to deal with it. The freezing of foreign aid from the United States has left holes in the provision of a number of essential services, and is likely to seriously constrain the reconstruction work. Even before President Trump froze aid spending, Mozambique was struggling with post-cyclone reconstruction: two months after Cyclone Chido struck in December 2024, businesses in Cabo Delgado have still not got back on their feet, as Zitamar News reported last month.

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From the Zitamar Live Blog:

Zitamar Mozambique Live Blog

Cyclone Jude entered the mainland of Mozambique during the early hours of today, through the district of Mossuril in Nampula province, with average winds of 140 km/h and gusts of up to 195 km/h. According to Mozambique’s weather office INAM, the cyclone has weakened, reached the stage of Severe Tropical Storm and continues to influence the weather with strong rain and winds in the provinces of Nampula, Zambézia and Cabo Delgado. Due to the impacts of the cyclone, around 436,000 customers are without electricity in the city of Nampula and the districts of Angoche and Nacala, according to Mozambique’s state power utility, EDM. At the moment, access roads are interrupted, making it difficult to restore the electricity supply to affected customers, it said in a statement. Sign up for Zitamar’s daily briefing email here Follow Zitamar on our Telegram Channel, on BlueSky, Twitter / X, Facebook, and Linkedin ...to keep abreast of all the latest developments in #Mozambique

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Other Western donors to Mozambique, even if they do not sound like the Trump administration, are enacting policies with similar effects: the Dutch government last month announced cuts to various foreign aid programmes including on climate action, while the British government recently declared that its foreign aid budget would be cut by £6bn ($7.8bn) a year.