A growing
food crisis has put between five and nine million people at risk of going
hungry in the Sahel region of West Africa, the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee
(CRWRC)
and other international relief agencies are reporting.
and other international relief agencies are reporting.
Especially
vulnerable are some one million children in the area, which has been plagued
with chronic levels of food insecurity, poverty and malnutrition for many
years.
As CRWRC
is completing its $10 million response to the devastating drought elsewhere in
Eastern Africa, the agency has begun to turn its attention to providing help to
people in the semi-arid region south of the Sahara. CRWRC is the disaster
relief and development agency of the Christian Reformed Church.
A season
of erratic rainfall, drought and insect infestations have led to the severe
food shortage. The region, which has encountered droughts in the past, includes
Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger and the northern regions of
Cameroon, Nigeria and Senegal.
CRWRC’s
immediate focus will be on Niger, which is one of the most severely impacted
countries in the region. In Niger, insufficient rains nationwide led to a 31
percent decline in crop production compared to last year. Experts estimate that
cereal production for Niger’s 15 million people is likely to be the lowest in
20 years.
As with
other countries in the region, Niger has also been impacted by very steep
increases in food prices. The country has also experienced difficulties due to
the recent the crisis in Libya.
For years,
many Nigeriens have depended on family members who lived and worked in Libya.
During the crisis people fled Libya, leaving behind their jobs and belongings,
and causing many Nigerien families to suffer from the loss of income and the
added burden of more mouths to feed. In the last week, many people have also
fled to Niger to escape a new crisis in Mali, further increasing the number of
people who are vulnerable.
As a
result of this combination of events, one-third of Niger’s population has been
declared “food insecure” by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs. This means that people are unable to access enough nutritionally
adequate food to stay healthy and active. In urban areas of Niger, 32 percent
of the people are already food insecure, and in rural areas the percentage is
51 percent.
In a news
release on Tuesday, the Sahel regional representative in Dakar for the
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies estimated that
up to 23 million people in region have been affected by the drought and could
face hunger if a disaster is not averted.
In the
face of this new crisis, CRWRC is in the planning process with its partners to
determine how they will respond. They are currently planning a food assistance
response, including the subsidized sale of grain, various food-for-work
activities, distribution of seeds, and possibly digging wells.
CRWRC has
been working in Niger for nearly two decades, partnering with local churches
and community organizations to carry out long-term community programs as well
as responses to disaster situations.
