Mozambique: Rehabilitation of Massingir Dam Budgeted At Four Million Dollars

What the report says

Mozambique’s Southern Regional Water Board, known as ARA-Sul, says it will spend about US$4 million to rehabilitate Massingir Dam after floods this year on the Elefantes River. The report from AllAfrica, citing Agencia de Informação de Moçambique and ARA-Sul Director-General Edgar Chongo, says the flooding caused the dam’s auxiliary spillway to activate automatically, which the infrastructure had not previously experienced.

The planned work includes replacing concrete blocks in the emergency discharge system and upgrading electrical equipment. Chongo said the dam’s flood-control layers were pushed to their limits as water arriving from upstream countries remained high, forcing the emergency mechanism to operate. He stressed that the activation was a designed safety response rather than a dam failure, and said contractors are already on site.

The article adds that ARA-Sul sees the experience as useful for broader safety planning in southern Mozambique. It says the agency is considering a similar emergency spillway for Corumana Dam, which currently lacks one. For now, the water board says storage levels at major southern dams remain adequate ahead of the next rainy season, with Pequenos Libombos and Corumana near 90% and Massingir above 70%, though conditions could be affected by the severity and duration of a possible El Niño event.