Urgent need to confront widespread poverty

Dressed in a tattered T-shirt and dirty shorts, 10-year old Souleyman approached a UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) car that was packed near one of the only two supermarkets in Niger's capital, Niamey on Sunday. Leaning on the window, he stretched out his hand to beg for money. Moments later, Souleyman was joined by a blind man led by a six-year-old boy. Soon a crowd formed, all hands reaching out to the car for help. In this city of 600,000 people but few cars and no traffic jams, hundreds eke a living by begging. They left their rural homes hoping for a better life, only to end up in squalid shantytowns that have mushroomed around Niamey. Unemployment in Niger is high. In the searing 38-50 degrees Celsius heat, Niamey's unemployed have had to develop creative ways of survival. Some grow crops within city spaces, including on road banks and former flower gardens. Many of these are small sorghum and millet gardens. "Poverty is written on the people's faces," an aid worker who has lived in Niger for five years told IRIN. "It is not just in the capital, but everywhere you go in the country. People live on extremely little." Some are vendors or small business people. They man telephone booths, coffee machines, shine shoes and sell in makeshift roadside kiosks. All manner of goods are sold in the kiosks, including fruits, biscuits, non-food items and even piles of grass. Outside the UNICEF car, a vendor on realising that no one was interested his oranges, ran a few yards away and returned with mangoes. Still nobody seemed interested. "I could run for my beautiful bananas," he shouted out in exasperation. Niger, a vast country of 1,267,000 sq. km was ranked second poorest country in the world, on the UN Development Programme's Human Development Report of 2002. It has a population of 11 million. Nearly two thirds of the people do not have sufficient income for their basic needs, including food, clothing, clean water and shelter. It is estimated that 42-50 percent live on about US $124 a year. The rest live on $71-$89. Those who have jobs are mainly employed by the government which has about 40,000 civil servants. However they earn an average of US $100 a month. With this meager salary, they cater for 10-15 extended family members each, a government official told IRIN. To supplement incomes, the civil servants who live in the few government houses in Niamey keep livestock, including cows, goats and sheep in the city. It is for these animals that grass is sold on the roadsides. "To lose a job in the civil service here is equal to death," he said. "To go without pay is also a very painful experience." Until the late 1990s, Niger's civil servants could go without pay for several months. The current government led by President Mamadou Tandja under his National Movement for the Society in Development party, has reversed this. Tandja, who was elected President in 1999, prioritised civil service pay. His government developed innovative ways to pay off arrears, including allocating parcels of land to those owed. Second poorest country - UNDP report According to UNDP, the probability that a child in Niger would not reach age 40 in 1995-2000 was 41.4 percent. The life expectancy is estimated at 46 years while adult illiteracy among 15-year olds and above is 84.1 percent. Nearly 80 percent of the population is rural. However the land supports little local food production due to the arid climate and poor soil. Food insecurity is therefore a chronic problem, with the children most hit, a UNICEF Niger report said. Relief workers say their work is hindered by the vastness of the country, enormous needs and no infrastructure. The vastness of the country also creates unique transport difficulties. Ordinary people at times move around using bulls, donkeys and camels. On its part, the government has constructed main highways from Niamey northwards to Arlit on the Libyan border, to Nguigmi and Diffa linking the southeast to Nigeria and Chad, and linking the capital to Benin and Burkina Faso in the southwest. Niger lies on the fringes of the vast African Sahara desert. According to UNICEF, 75 percent of the people are concentrated in the southern region. However the whole country experiences drought about once every 10 years. Still most of the people are small-scale farmers, growing mainly sorghum and millet. "People are reluctant to change their traditional habits," the government official told IRIN. "We are used to eating millet and we'll continue to do so because our fore fathers ate the same," he quoted farmers as saying. A former president attempted to promote the planting of beans because of its nutritional value. He met stiff opposition from the people who said: "Beans are for people who live along the coast so we can't eat it." Niger sunk further into the quagmire of poverty following a revolt by Tuareg tribes that began in 1990. The Tuaregs accused the government of failing to deliver on promised economic aid. The revolt developed into an armed rebellion until 1996. Poverty reduction strategies Officials said a lot of money has been pumped into the country by donors, but not much of its impact is evident. "I think corruption and mismanagement could be blamed for the sad state of affairs, although the present government is trying to put things back on track," an official said. During 2002-2005, the government and the World Bank developed a poverty reduction strategy, giving priority to access to essential social services, including health, education and water. It also prioritises food security, desertification and natural resource management. Matters could however be made worse by the advance southwards of the desert. Researchers say the movement of the desert is due to lack of rain and long drought spans, which have also affected the soil. "To combat desertification the President had launched an initiative with rural women in which they were encouraged to collect stones for trapping water, whenever it rains," the official explained. "At the same time, all people are encouraged to dig trances to catch water and to plant trees," he added. "They are being encouraged to practice rotational logging. The few forests available are being classified by the government." Government is also trying to reform the legal sector, improve its administrative management and address gender issues, including children and women's rights. It plans macro-economic reforms, income generations activities, financial planning and management and rural electrification. The United Nations Developemnt Programme (UNDP) in Niger has chipped-in with poverty alleviation programmes. In 2000, it started pilot projects to promote local development in four areas in the country. "The programme was designed such that local people take larger responsibility of the projects which include agriculture, water and sanitation, training for capacity building, education, health and capacity building," a UN official said. UNDP works closely with the government and has managed since 2000, to assist thousands of farmers, mainly women to start and manage vegetable gardens. Thousands of others were trained on livestock care. The programme had improved food security through the reinforcement of population capacity for self-help and self-management of community development. "We have seen the success of this initiative which focuses quite a lot on women. We have seen people buy more cows and other start small businesses and their lives have changed," the official added. Another agency, the UN children's fund (UNICEF) has a small-scale programme targeting rural women. UNICEF's Representative in Niger, Adjibade Aboudou Karimou, said they support rural women through their associations or cooperatives. The women are grouped in 100s to develop their own programmes. These include micro-finance programmes to provide small-scale grants to group members through their cooperatives. The members invest the money and repay the credits from their profits. "UNICEF has an agreement with the cooperatives that the grant is kept in an account and that it generates interest," Karimou told IRIN. It helps women to establish cereal banks or purchase livestock. "We can give a group two, five or 10 tons of maize, sorghum or millet which they can keep and wait to resell when the prices in the markets are high and buy more cereals when the prices are low," he added. "These programmes have had a direct impact on the women," Karimou said. "By extension they have also had an impact in the nutritional status of families. There are some women who took livestock and have multiplied their production 10 times," he added. Together with other UN agencies like UNICEF, UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the World Food Programme (WFP), UNDP plans to set up a more comprehensive poverty eradication programme for 2004-07.