The steady, rhythmic thud of women grinding millet and sorghum is the only sound that breaks the silence in Tamtala, a remote, mud-walled village in the southwest of Niger.
The village’s men and many of the women and children are out in the fields, hunger and fatigue etched into their faces. They are hoeing and raking the orange earth as they plant the village’s sorghum, millet and bean crops, which extend as far as an hour’s walk away.
A frantic burst of agriculture in the five-month rainy season, which usually runs from June to October, produces the only income for the village. For the rest of the year, the people sit idle, trying to extend the product from the last harvest until the next rains come.
Hunger and poverty are roiling villages like this one in Niger - the world’s poorest country. But the widespread publicity of hunger in the nation last year has led to big changes in responses to the country’s difficulties.
Massive relief projects have already reached hundreds of thousands of people this year and are keeping the most vulnerable Nigeriens on life-support.
However, without an ongoing, simultaneous focus on development, the country will always be one bad harvest away from catastrophe, United Nations officials say.
NEW APPROACH TO HUNGER
Some 7.5 million Nigeriens, or 60 percent of the population, survive on less than one dollar a day, according to the UN. At least 85 percent of the population is illiterate. More than half of Nigeriens have no access to clean drinking water, and few will live to see their 45th birthday.
A landlocked, resource-poor country, Niger is ranked last of 177 countries surveyed in every table compiled by the UN’s Human Development Index.
Last year, failed harvests throughout the Sahel region pushed market prices sky high in Niger and elsewhere, leaving many unable to afford to buy food after their stocks from the previous year’s harvest had run out.
A fundraising campaign by aid agencies in Niger sparked the attention of journalists. By mid-October media were broadcasting images and stories of Niger’s emaciated children around the world. NGOs and donated money flooded into the country, and feeding tents were set up in major towns and small villages.
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| Map of Niger |
One in five Nigeriens will die before reaching their fifth birthday.
Recent visits by IRIN to several towns and villages in the southwest and southern central zone of the vast country found less evidence of the severe hunger reported last year.
Seidou Bakari, coordinator of the government’s food crisis response unit, told IRIN the government is taking a new approach to hunger and food shortages to identify and provide for the society’s most vulnerable ahead of time.
In conjunction with the UN, the Government Early Warning System and Institute for Statistics carried out in May what the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) calls “one of the most exhaustive assessments” ever completed in Niger.
Based on this surveying, Bakari said the government drew up a plan for 2006, which includes free distributions for the most vulnerable, such as single mothers, widows, the disabled and elderly.
The government has also coordinated a programme to get food supplements to 234,000 children under five who live more than 10 km from a health centre.
Over a half million children had already been treated at 855 feeding centres around the country by mid-August, according to UNICEF. The agency constantly receives nutritional information from NGOs and government monitors for analysis.
This measured, long-term response has averted the scenes of massive hunger seen last year, when aid agencies rushed into the country at the height of the lean season.
COLLABORATION REAPING RESULTS
The international response to Niger’s hunger problem has also been strong, with food positioned in the most vulnerable areas ahead of time. The few paved roads in Niger were clogged last week with fleets of articulated trucks bringing food for distribution.
"Recovery from a year as difficult as 2005 does not happen overnight," WFP Niger Country Director Sory Ouane said in a statement released on Friday when the first distributions started.
"A significant proportion of the population are still struggling to get back on their feet, despite what was a good harvest at the end of last year. They need a safety net and, together with the government, we are providing it."
WFP has already provided food for 1.8 million Nigeriens this year, and could feed up to 3.9 million by the end of the year, according to donors.
NGO officials also report a much-improved response to their work in Niger.
Last year, the dozens of foreign NGOs that flooded into the country had set their tents up in independent facilities. NGO heads told IRIN the government was “less than welcoming”, and in some instances “obstructionist”.
But in mid-August this year, at four health facilities IRIN visited at random around Maradi and Tillaberi, two of the hardest hit areas, NGO staff was integrated into government wards, or at least working in government health compounds. They said this was evidence of a new spirit of cooperation.
“It would have been unimaginable to expect to see this kind of response last year,” said one NGO leader.
The Nigerien Ministry of Health has accepted malnutrition as a public health concern, and one that should be treated with set guidelines by the national health system, health workers say.
The improved playing field for NGOs has also paid off in better funding for their relief projects.
“Before last year we would talk about Niger in Europe but there was no response. There was a kind of fatalism towards hunger in Niger, and the country was better known for its tourism than hunger,” said the head of one European NGO. “We were almost completely focused on Mali and only did development work in Niger.”
POVERTY UNDERMINES PROGRESS
Putting better systems and organisations in place to deal with the widespread hunger that happens at this time every year is only half the story.
Tamtala’s villagers are going hungry just 60 kilometres away from a regional market at Boubon, where every Wednesday hundreds of traders cram the narrow allies with every product imaginable, including sacks of food, fresh fruit and vegetables, and meat.
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| Food for a price at Boubon market |
Although improved availability in the region means these prices are half of last year, the products are still beyond the reach of most people. The village’s poorest people might earn CFA 10-30,000 (US $20-60) from their annual cut of the harvest. The richest might earn CFA 200,000 (US $400).
Tamtalans said they had already accumulated debts to the traders far beyond what they can repay. This year, the village as a whole will turn over four tons of their precious harvest to the traders at a pre-negotiated rate of CFA 10,000 (US $20) per sack, well below market price.
Meanwhile, as aid agencies start handing out food in Niger this week, early warning systems are producing data that gives the first indication of what kind of response will be needed next year.
A report released on 8 August by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned that Niger is the Sahelian country most affected by unequal rainfall this year.
The report highlighted the Maradi, Zinder and Diffa regions, all in the south of the country, as most at risk of low yields this year. It said over 400 villages have delayed planting because of poor rains.
"There is a crisis every year in Niger, relative to the high infant mortality," said Jean Herve Bradol, president of Medecins Sans Frontieres/France, during a visit to Maradi. "We have a huge relief operation here and have already admitted several tens of thousands of children. The crisis is a structural one.”
PRE-EMPT THE EMERGENCY
Weaning Nigeriens off their reliance on fickle rains, unpredictable donor funds, and borrowing from traders means addressing Niger’s deeper economic problems, according to the head of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Niamey, Michele Falavigna,
“The world has to find a sustainable way to avert these kinds of problems before they become a crisis,” he said, speaking specifically about the country’s chronic nutrition problem.
Falavigna pointed to Niger’s vast and little-exploited underground natural resources of gold, oil and coal, as being potential economic boosters through which to channel more money into government coffers, and build an economy that could wean people off their dependence on agriculture.
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| Getting more out of the ground is a priority |
Improving the country’s irrigation to get water from vast underground reservoirs and into fields is another major priority, he said.
However, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) representative in Niger, Pierre Laporte, is sanguine about the country’s medium-term prospects. “This is a country that will remain reliant on donor support for a long time to come,” he said.
The IMF has been working with the government on a scheme to improve tax revenues that can be spent on poverty alleviation projects.
Back in Tamtala village, these machinations are far from the mind of village chief Issoufou Seydou. His first concern is just getting the village through this year, and the next.
All the village’s millet, which requires the least water to survive, has been planted. But sorghum, the second most important product, still has not been sown. Without regular rains, the precious seeds would burn up in the sun.
He is worried that rains might not continue for long enough. If that happens, all the millet would die and the village would be left with next to nothing. Given one request to the international community, he said he would ask for a cereal bank, which would at least give the villagers security that they would be able to eat from one week to the next.
“We are praying to God that the rains continue,” Seydou said. “If it stops, there will be a catastrophe.”
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This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
