Floods, drought and food insecurity reported

While agriculture in parts of southern Niger has been affected by insufficient rains, forcing some farmers to delay planting, a flood in Agadez, some 900 km north of the capital, Niamey, has claimed at least four lives, national radio reported.

The deaths occurred between Friday and Saturday when heavy rains in mountains located upstream from Agadez caused a wadi (seasonal river) to overflow, damaging about 250 huts and houses made of baked mud. On 24 July, five persons had died in Agadez when heavy rains caused a wall to collapse on them.

Agadez usually receives no rain. It is not considered an agricultural area like parts of southern Niger, according to the Regional Centre for Training and Application in Agrometereology and Operational Hydrology (AGHRYMET Centre) in Niamey.

The Centre said in its latest bulletin that the deficit - registered at 84 percent of metereological monitoring stations - had prevented farmers in 619 villages from sowing their crops as at 31 July. The worst shortages were registered in the western regions of Ayerou, Balleyara, Hamdallaye and Loga, along with Kieche, Doungou and Tessaoua in the east, it added.

This situation has been compounded by an invasion of grasshoppers, which have devastated millet and sorghum crops in the regions of Dosso, in the west, the south central area of Maradi, and Tahoua in the north.

AGRHYMET said there had been an increase in the prices of basic food items, especially in Niamey, the western town of Tillabery and Diffa in the east. Early this year a 100-kg bag of millet cost 13,000 CFA francs, but it now fetches between 20,000 and 25,000 CFA in these towns. (US $1 is equivalent to 670 CFA francs).

Since June, Niger's Early warning and Disaster Management Service (SAP/GC - French acronym) had described the lack of rain as "worrying".

SAP/GC has declared many areas food insecure, saying that some people were eating their emergency grain stocks or had been reduced to one meal a day. In its latest monthly bulletin, the service said there was an increase in malnutrition among children younger than five years in the affected zones. In some villages, entire families had migrated.

Niger declared a grain surplus of 297,000 mt at the last harvest. Officials blame the current shortages on hoarding as well as trade liberalisation, as a result of which significant volumes of grain are being exported, leading to an irregular supply on the local market.