Year in Review 2005 - Hunger in the Sahel

Any discussion of West Africa's nutritional situation in 2005 generally turns to the previous year's scant rains and plagues of locusts - a double blow that destroyed crops, pasture and livelihoods. But as many government officials and experts have emphasised, the region's hunger crisis in 2005 was less about one-off natural disasters than problems that are present year in year out but rarely make international headlines. Niger, the world's poorest nation, grabbed the media spotlight in mid-2005. But Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Chad and countries along the southern fringes of the Sahara Desert, also had a particularly rough year, with severe malnutrition striking hundreds of thousands of people, the majority of them children. At the close of 2005, aid workers, development experts and governments were examining the lessons to be learnt from the wave of hunger that swept the region, with some government officials not only pointing to the need to prevent rather than manage crises, but also chastising the humanitarian community for acting unilaterally. After poor rains and devastating locust swarms, Niger's government foresaw trouble. As early as November 2004 - citing a grain deficit of 223,500 tonnes and a pasture shortage of 4.6 million tonnes - the government appealed to the international community for aid. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) was also warning of potential crises across the Sahel region. In January 2005, WFP appealed to donors to provide nearly half a million people in Mauritania with food aid. In March, WFP asked donors for millions of dollars to help avoid the worst in Niger and Mali, the countries hardest hit. Crisis bites By April 2005, the WFP team in Niger was calling the situation there "critical," pointing to worrying trends of severe malnutrition in children.

A woman and her malnourished child at hospital in Gao, Mali

During these already touchy times, the Niger government prompted violent protests when it raised taxes on a host of consumer goods to meet International Monetary Fund conditions. The UN made an appeal for US $7 million for Niger, an appeal that would more than quadruple by July, as numbers of severely malnourished children soared. The governments of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso began free food distributions or subsidised cereal sales to affected communities. In these countries, malnutrition is a part of life, particularly during the “lean” season - the period when the harvest from the previous year has been exhausted and the next season's harvest is not yet ripe. "This year's food crisis revealed a longstanding nutritional crisis," said Seidou Bakari, head of Niger’s food crisis unit. The United Nations estimates that 13 million children under five in West Africa are suffering from chronic malnutrition. Traditional agricultural methods, erratic weather, soil erosion, lack of basic health care and education, are some factors making communities ultra-vulnerable to the slightest disruption in food supplies. Niger and other Sahelien countries also have a difficult time feeding their people partly because of an archaic food production system that makes communities almost totally dependent on rainfall.

Villagers in Mali collecting firewood

In a report, the US Agency for International Development said locusts and an early end to 2004's rains "exacerbated existing poverty and vulnerability and resulted in elevated food insecurity in agro-pastoral and pastoral zones in Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and Mauritania." Food prices spiral upwards In June 2005, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation said fallout from 2004's natural disasters was driving food prices up and putting millions in the Sahel region at risk of shortages. Disruption in the regional market contributed heavily to people's lack of access to staple foods. A July FEWS report pointed out that while in most years, Niger imports surplus cereals from neighbouring Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Mali, in 2005 "these three countries imposed restrictions of exports, due to fears of famine and grain shortages, despite trade treaties that forbid that." Communities dependent on livestock were especially hard hit by 2004's crop and pasture damage. The death of many animals, and the decrease in market value of the skinny livestock that survived, combined to devastating effect for herder families.

Herders in Niger extract water from a rare well for their cattle

Oxfam - which has a programme in Niger to assist nomadic animal-breeding communities - compared the loss of livestock to someone in the West having their bank account wiped out or their house repossessed. The Niger government's initial approach was to subsidise grain sales, instead of distributing food for free. It triggered much debate about the best way to handle such crises. Opposition parties and some aid groups slammed the government for failing to hand out food to the worst affected communities immediately. UN experts and government officials explain the decision to distribute free food is not as straightforward as it might seem. Certain donor policies restrict how governments use their national food stocks. Furthermore, food handouts can disrupt markets or undermine mechanisms in place to guarantee long-term food security. In mid-July 2005, however, the Niger government decided to allow free food distributions to the hardest hit communities. Much talk, slow action As G8 countries prepared to meet in Scotland - poverty reduction in Africa high on their agenda - WFP told donor nations they could make a giant leap towards reducing poverty by breaking the vicious cycle of hunger for the poorest of the poor in Niger and Mali. In July 2005, after images of starving infants had made their way to the world's television screens, international donors began digging deep in their pockets for the aid effort in Niger. According to UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland, more donations came in during the first half of July, than in the previous 10 months. At the time, the UN estimated that about 2.5 million of Niger's 12 million people were living on less than one meal a day, some surviving on wild roots and leaves. By the end of September, donors had provided $34.1 million towards the $57.6 million WFP wanted, allowing the agency to complete its first round of food distributions to 1.7 million people. By the end of the year, total donations to the overall UN Niger relief effort topped $113 million. The Sahel saw better rains and negligible locust outbreaks in 2005, making the harvest that began in late September relatively robust in Niger and across the region.

Residents of a Niger village relieved at a better harvest in 2005

Still, experts warned that the fallout from the food crisis would continue to take a heavy toll. Many families who lost livestock or went deep into debt are still living very much on the edge. While there was disagreement between the Niger government and the humanitarian community over the gravity of the lingering food shortage as the year ended, one point all players appeared to agree on was that tackling the root causes of such crises should be the priority. Long-term solutions The Sahel experience in 2005, particularly events in Niger, sparked broad discussions about what lessons could be drawn. It also brought debate on the role of aid groups and governments in emergency relief efforts. The Niger government in December denounced some members of the international humanitarian community for acting "unilaterally." During talks on the overall response to Niger’s food crisis, Prime Minister Amadou Hama said that some members of the aid sector had undermined the government's credibility and sovereignty by putting more trust in NGOs than in the authorities to save lives. Hama also said the world must help countries like Niger tackle poverty in the long-term. "It is useless to continue to mobilise short-term aid through the media which relieves just momentarily a mother's angst but leaves her to live through her child's inevitable relapse, and the worry that her other children will be born into the same conditions, because of crippling poverty," he said. Representatives of the UN, regional governments, humanitarian and development agencies and the donor community met in Dakar, Senegal, in December to discuss how to minimise poverty and hunger in the Sahel region. Of the $145 million the UN is seeking in its comprehensive funding appeal for the region for 2006, some 70 percent will be devoted to food security. The stakes are high. "High malnutrition levels are undercutting the future of these countries,” said Margareta Wahlstrom, deputy UN emergency relief coordinator.