IRIN Focus on food security in the Sahel

Cereal deficits have sent Burkina Faso's government appealing for help, prompted Cameroon's authorities to dispatch emergency aid to the north of their country and increased the vulnerability of populations in Chad, humanitarian sources told IRIN. While 2000-2001 has been an average year for cereal production in the Sahel as a whole, it was a tough one for Chad, Burkina Faso and also Niger, Birame Wane, a vulnerability analysis consultant with the World Food Programme (WFP), told IRIN. (Cameroon is on the fringe of the Sahel zone). The Ouagadougou-based Permanent Inter-State Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS - French acronym) has forecast a cereal deficit of 930,200 mt in the 2000/2001 agricultural season in its nine member states. That amounts to roughly 10.8 percent of the combined requirement of the CILSS countries: Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Chad, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal, whose cereal production for the season is estimated at just under 7.7 million mt. CILSS is based in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Its mandate is to carry out research on food security and fight the effects of drought and desertification so as to achieve a new ecological balance. In October, its Unité de Prévention et Gestion des Crises Alimentaires au Sahel (PREGEC - Unit for the Prevention and Management of Food Crises in the Sahel) forecast a deficit of 163,000 mt in Niger and 86,700 mt in Burkina Faso in 2000-2001. However, the government of Burkina Faso estimates its deficit at 442,000 mt or just over 20 percent of national needs. "We are expecting support from the donors because we are facing a serious food crisis," the minister of social welfare and national solidarity, Gilbert Ouedraogo, said on Monday. He told representatives of donor countries and non-governmental organisations that the government was seeking some nine billion CFA francs (about US $12.8 million) to buy 65,300 mt of cereals, mainly maize and millet, to meet the immediate needs of some 1.1 million people facing severe food shortages in 31 of the country's 45 provinces. In the case of Chad, the cereal deficit is about 377,000 mt, according to the PREGEC preliminary forecast. In December 2000, a joint team from the World Food Programme (WFP), FAO, donor countries, and the Chadian Agriculture Ministry estimated the number of severely affected people needing urgent food aid in the worst hit parts of Chad's Sahelian belt at 375,000, the director of WFP's regional office in Yaounde, Dali Belgasmi, told IRIN. "We (WFP) are going to distribute 27,000 mt for six months to preserve the nutritional state of the people concerned, thereby curbing the rural exodus," he said. This, in turn, would help maintain the social balance in the countryside, he said, explaining that such migrations often lead to competition for resources such as water in host communities and the risk of friction between new arrivals and locals. Chad's Sahelian regions have just one harvest a year. This year's has been affected by scant rain and pests, according to Belgasmi. "The situation is very dangerous since there was a considerable drop in rainfall (in 2000), up to 200 mm less than the previous year" in some areas, he said, adding that donors and aid agencies needed to speed up the provision of food aid to Chad. Chad also had to request food aid in 1999/2000, when donors sent 10,400 mt to the semi-arid landlocked country. Similar donations were made last year to Burkina Faso (27,800 mt) and Niger (9,000 mt), according to PREGEC. The rainfall deficit that has caused food insecurity in Chad also affected the North and Far North provinces of neighbouring Cameroon. Usually farmers in northern Cameroon plant dry-season sorghum towards the end of the secondary rainy season in late September/early October. Last year, however, the rains stopped in mid-September so by the time farmers were ready much of the soil was already too dry, WFP's Giancarlo Cirri told IRIN. Unlike Chad, Cameroon has two cereal harvests a year. The coming harvest of sorghum - a type of millet - will be very bad because the acreage sown was 50-60 percent less than the previous season, according to Cirri, who heads the WFP branch office in Maroua, northern Cameroon. Millet accounts for 20 percent to 35 percent of Cameroon's cereal production, depending on the year. WFP and its partners plan to carry out a needs assessment mission in the north of the country, whose government has approved 4,000 mt in emergency aid for the affected area. The authorities estimate Cameroon's cereal deficit at 250,000 mt. However, this represents the difference between current production and that of the previous year, in which a record production was achieved, a humanitarian source said. There are signs that parts of northern Nigeria, which borders on the Sahel, are also feeling the effects of insufficient rains. At the end of last week, Nigerian newspapers reported that people from about 30 communities in the northeast were crossing into Cameroon in search of drinking water for themselves and their cattle. Some had moved out permanently, while others were shuttling between Cameroon and Nigeria in search of water. About 15 communities were likely to follow suit, a local councillor was reported as saying.