**2. The hazard: floods and its invention**

Floods come in various forms and are living testimonies of the conflict between urban development and weather-related vulnerabilities. According to Van Niekerk and Nemakonde [1], fluvial floods, flash floods and glacial lake outburst floods make the list. For Sub-Saharan Africa the main floods that inflict the region come from periods of high intensity rainfall emanating from tropical cyclones and storm surges [2]. For instance, the 2018 to 2019 South Indian cyclone was a fluvial flood

that resulted in flood damage of exponential levels in Africa [3]. This was caused mainly by cyclone Idai which affected Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique leaving a trail of destructions and deaths [4]. As for flash floods, these are of a short duration caused by high intensity rainfall that quickly floods the smaller basins. Africa is overwhelmed with periods of extreme rainfall and recurrent floods which may be associated with El Nino events which leave a lot of destructions in all sectors of the economies [5]. However, it is a misnomer to suggest that it is only the African continent that is prone to floods. In his article titled, 'The Floods: a man-made disaster?', [6] warns the Army Corps of Engineers in America that its concrete navigation structures in the Mississippi River were intensifying floods, and that its plans to build more wingdikes and weirs would exacerbate a severe and growing problem. Grunwald [6] clearly shows the human hand in the creation of flooding condition. It therefore follows that, while there are naturally caused floods that would have occurred from time to time that natural systems could mostly handle, our development of a lot of the world's landscape and our consumptive lifestyles have led to not only in the increase in flood occurrences, but also cause floods. Flood as natural event, relates to God's venting of anger and flood as man-made implies man's failure to mitigate and prepare adequately for hazard to reduce its impact on infrastructure on which livelihoods depend on.
