Beira, Central Mozambique

Beira used to be Mozambique’s second largest city and port. It is the nearest point on the coast to the landlocked countries of what used to be called the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland – Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi. The railway line from the interior was once the busiest in Africa.

And it wasn’t just copper, wheat and cattle that came down the track. Beira was the playground for white Rhodesians. There would be as many English-speaking voices as Portuguese in the bars of the stylish hotels or the gardens of the neat seaside villas. The city was built on a grand scale – wide boulevards and imposing administrative buildings.

That all went down the tubes soon after independence when Mozambique slid into a 15 year civil war. Renamo – the South African-backed rebel movement – overran much of central and northern Mozambique. For much of the war, Beira was cut off from its hinterland and soon, literally, began to crumble.

The war ended in 1992 and it slowly got back on its feet. Until a few years ago, you could smell Beira long before you reached the city. The sewerage system had collapsed completely. But donors paid for it to be re-constructed by the world’s most proficient municipal sanitation engineers – the Italians (I’m not making this up!!).

But there’s still a lot to do. Beira’s Grande Hotel (see the picture above in its heyday) is now "home" to 3700 people in a sort of self-governing community. No paradise this, though. There’s no electricity or running water. Chunks of masonry fall off almost daily, sometimes with people on them. Fear stalks the pitch-black corridors at night.

The majority of suburban villas are also home to dispossessed people who eke out a living growing vegetables in the gardens.

Beira is still very poor. One indicator of this is the traffic – there isn’t any. The photo on the left is one of the main thoroughfares in the afternoon “rush hour”. There are only six scheduled flights a day from the airport, all but one on domestic routes.

If you’re a donor-funded consultant on expenses, it’s a very pleasant place to work.  And you can easily make a difference. People want to catch up with the rest of Southern Africa – or at least with Maputo whose economy is thriving (relatively).

In case you’re curious, I’ll do another blog tomorrow about what I’m doing here (it's not that interesting - no diamond smuggling).