Universities pick up the pieces in wake of Cyclone Idai

University authorities in central Mozambique are reporting that at least 20,000 students are still unable to resume their education in the region, following serious damage caused to their institutions by Cyclone Idai, which devastated the country’s major northern port Beira over two days last month.

All higher education institutions in this city of 530,000 people have ceased working normally as a result, with equipment damaged by the storm including computers and engineering machinery, as well as offices, with some academic records lost.

The Catholic University of Mozambique, the largest privately-owned higher education facility in Mozambique, based in Beira, was particularly hard hit, with its faculty of economics and management, faculty of health sciences, its distance learning centre, and its rectory halting all services and classes since the cyclone hit on 14 and 15 March.

Recovery strategies

Don Cláudio Dalla Zuanna, chancellor of the Catholic University of Mozambique and archbishop of Beira, said several recovery strategies have been drafted to heal the damage, not only to the university, but also to Catholic churches in the region.

"The faculty of health sciences was the most affected. Most of the administrative block, classrooms, and sports hall lost roofs, windows, bars and glass, which will require us to redouble efforts in order not to fail to deliver the academic calendar for the 2019 school year,” the chancellor said.

Special clean-up and repair teams have been created, uniting technical staff with teachers, to facilitate the return of normal operations.

Professor Doutor Nobre Roque dos Santos, rector of the public university Universidade Zambeze (UniZambeze), said that his institution had also been damaged, with the faculty of science and technology, the department of academic records and its computer equipment destroyed. The university’s computer laboratory and eight classrooms all lost their roofs, and their equipment was submerged in water.

Electricity

Classes at UniZambeze resumed on Wednesday, 27 March, but with just 4,000 students who attend daytime courses. "The evening students will wait until the electricity is restored in Beira,” Dos Santos said.

The private Alberto Chipande Institute of Science and Technology (ISCTAC) in Beira was also badly damaged, said Deputy Vice-Chancellor Júlio Taimira Chibemo. All faculties were extensively damaged, including the health science faculty laboratories, the roofs of which were ripped off and windows destroyed.

Chibemo said part of the rectory was left without doors and windows, and office materials and academic records, including student registration documents, were lost.

Partial resumption of classes

This damage and the fact that power supplies to Beira were damaged and have yet to be wholly restored means the institute suspended classes on 14 March and only resumed some studies on 1 April: "Today [1 April] we were able to start with a part of the faculty of economics and management and law, and are waiting for the start of classes at the faculty of health sciences," he said, adding that close to 4,900 students have been deprived of tuition in this institution.

The Beira campus of the Pedagogical University of Mozambique was also hit by the cyclone, although not as seriously, with building facades and some windows broken. Daytime classes were swiftly resumed, although evening classes have yet to resume because of unreliable electricity supply.

Cyclone Idai also damaged education facilities in the northern Mozambique cities of Dondo and Buzi, according to Manuel Chicamisse, provincial director of education and human development in Sofala province.

Distance courses run in the region in rented houses by the Higher Institute of Science and Distance Education (ISCED), the Catholic University, and the medical school Instituto Médio Politécnico Globo – Nzeru Mbawiri, among others, have yet to restart in Sofala province, he said.