Over 10 millions people are facing hunger in the West African Sahel before the September harvests, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. In Niger, approximately half of the 13.4 million inhabitants are short of food. Up to two million Chadian and hundreds of thousands of Mauritanians and Malians also need assistance.
Even though early interventions and prepositioning occurred, the response still needs to be drastically scaled-up, especially in Chad. Unlike in Niger where the humanitarian presence has remained important since the 2005 food crisis, there a few actors on the ground in the portion of Chad affected by the crisis. With the start of the rains, the already challenging task of bringing food in the country is expected to become even more complicated as some roads will have to close.
The Integrated Regional Information Networks’ (IRIN) small West African team - a chief editor, three reporters, one IT and an administrator – asked for support with the coverage of the food crisis. I landed in Dakar in early June to work with them for three months. I immediately started researching, interviewing and writing articles, with my colleague’s support. I will be traveling to the affected areas in the coming months to report from there.
The humanitarian news and analysis service is part of OCHA, but is editorially independent, which means that we do not necessarily reflect the United Nations’ views. It was founded 15 years ago to improve the flow of information to those involved in relief efforts in the Great Lakes region. It then broaden its scope to cover sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia. It aims at ensuring that decision-makers in aid organizations, governments, researchers, advocacy groups, media and the population have access to timely and reliable information on humanitarian issues.
It is proving to be a very stimulating deployment: it allows me to combine skills and knowledge I have gained as a journalist and as an aid worker, while I learn more about nutrition, food security and West Africa. I have spent several years working on the other side of the continent, focusing on forced displacement, with DRC, OCHA and UNHCR.
When I leave West Africa in September, the hunger season, the period between harvests stretching from May to August, will be ending. By then, it will be possible to assess whether the harvests will be good or not and if people will be faced with another crisis. Weather forecasts already indicate that the rains should be good this year.
Still, even in good years, a significant proportion of the population in the Sahel is undernourished and some 300,000 under-five children die annually of malnutrition, according to UNICEF. The population has been made so vulnerable by recurrent droughts and floods that any small shock becomes a catastrophe.
