Cabinet holds out hand to hungry as Oxfam, MSF urge extra help

As aid begins to arrive in Niger for 3.6 million people in dire need of food, members of the government this week dipped into their own pockets and urged the country's civil servants to do the same. At an emergency cabinet meeting over the crisis facing one out of four people in Niger, Prime Minister Hama Amadou plucked a million CFA francs (US $1,800) from his own wallet. Each of his ministers handed over half that sum. "Solidarity with people in Niger facing food problems must begin at home," one senior official told IRIN after the meeting on Wednesday. Ranked the world's second poorest country by the UN, vast arid Niger stands threatened by hunger until next October's harvests after swarms of crickets and poor rains last year dried up its food supplies. The grain deficit is estimated at more than 223,487 tonnes. To help fill empty stomachs, the government this week opted to 'loan' food to two million farmers seen as being most at risk of famine. At a meeting on Monday with donors, UN agencies and NGOs, Amadou said country-people facing severe food shortages would be given three 100-kg sacks of grain to tide them through the months of the lean season prior to the harvests. The food will give the farmers the strength to work the fields and help ensure a good harvest to carry over into the 2005-2006 season. Once the harvest is reaped, the three bags of millet, sorghum or corn will be reimbursed, Seydou Bakari, the coordinator of the government's food crisis unit, told IRIN. The prime minister said a food bank system that was set up last December in areas where supplies were expected to dry up had proven ineffective for the poorest Nigeriens. Under that system, cereal is sold at subsidised prices, enabling residents to buy, for example, 100 kilos of millet at 10,000 CFA (US $20), which is half the market price. But due to the slump in agricultural production, many Nigeriens are short of cash and cannot afford even subsidised foodstuffs. Of the 67,000 tonnes of subsidised cereals that were originally to be sold, only 40,000 tonnes have been put on the market. Opposition parties as well as some NGOs have lashed out against the sale of subsidised food for the hungry, and last week up to 2,000 people marched in Niamey to demand a handout of free food for the malnourished. In a statement released on Thursday, the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres also called for the free and "immediate provision of food aid to avoid a life-threatening situation for thousands of already malnourished children." It said that in parts of Niger where one out of five children suffered from malnutrition, the weak risked dying of malaria and diarrhoea in the coming weeks of the rainy season. The UK-based famine relief group Oxfam said in a statement issued on Wednesday that four million people in Mali, Niger and Mauritania urgently needed assistance for food, agricultural and livestock inputs. "Apart from the immediate need for food aid, urgent action is also required to provide seeds and agricultural supplies for planting now to ensure that there will be food to harvest this October for next year's supply," it said. Natasha Quist, Oxfam's West Africa director, said in the statement that while donor governments had stepped in briskly last year to help eradicate swarms of hungry locusts, the same governments "now appear to have lost interest in assisting those people suffering in the aftermath of last year's plague." The UN has called for more than US $16 million to help deal with what it calls Niger's "silent crisis", and aid officials said on Thursday that around US $3.5 million of the fund was now covered. On top of that, the European Union has pledged a further US $4.4 million for Niger, aid officials said, and even Algeria, which is not without its own problems, on Thursday sent two planes of food and medicine to Niamey.