Sahel’s looming food crisis gets swift response but no long-term answers

By Mark Tran, www.guardian.co.uk
9 January 2012 Governments in the Sahel and international relief agencies have been quick off the mark in acknowledging a looming food crisis. Last October, the government in drought-hit Niger – where almost 1 million people are in urgent need of food after a poor harvest – drafted a response plan, focusing on pastoralists, farmers and stocks, in anticipation of a crisis later this year. Part of the reason for the swift response is a change of government in Niger, ranked 186th out of 187 countries in the human development index. Mahamadou Issoufou, who was elected president in March 2011 following a military coup in 2010, appealed for international help after last year’s poor harvest in this vast state on the edge of the Sahara, which has faced massive population growth, pervasive poverty, food insecurity and instability for decades. “The new government is more open in telling the world that there are hungry people in Niger. The previous government was more reluctant,” said Farid Waliyar, west Africa director of Icrisat, the international crops research institute. Denise Brown, director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) office in Niger, agreed. The late arrival of last year’s rains “was enough to tell us a slow onset emergency was creeping up on us and we could not wait for it to hit us in the face”, she said. “The government in Niger came out early and jointly with international agencies and NGOs acknowledging it needed help. My colleagues have been astonished by the change and the transparency.” Late rains mean trouble for the “lean season”, when food from the last harvest runs out. This year’s lean season could begin in some countries as early as March, three months earlier than usual. Brown sounded the alarm in October and since then there has been a flurry of warnings about the looming crisis in the Sahel. […] The price of cereals should have fallen during the post-harvest period in Niger, but have risen sharply as a result of the poor yields. The average price of millet has risen by 37% as of last month compared with the same period last year, according to WFP. The government of Niger has classified up to 750,000 people as severely food insecure in four regions. WFP aims to provide food assistance to around 3.3 million people in Niger over the coming year at an estimated cost of $163m. The difficulties caused by food shortages and high prices have been exacerbated by a drop in remittances from sub-Saharan African migrant workers who have returned from countries such as Libya, leaving many families without an income. The International Organisation for Migration estimates that around 90,000 Nigeriens have returned home in the past year. […] the early response cannot mask the increasing frequency of droughts in the Sahel, which means communities are lurching from crisis to crisis with little time to recover from previous shocks. And things are not going to get better. A UN study last month said climate change is already having an impact on the livelihoods of millions of people in the Sahel and west Africa. Climate change, combined with population growth and weak governance, has intensified competition over scarce resources as well as changing migration patterns, increasing the risk of conflict, it said. Security analysts fear that Al-Qaida in the Maghreb (AQIM) will seek to exploit instability in the region. The UN study identified “hotspots” where changing temperature trends over the past 40 years have caused severe flooding and droughts, significantly altering people’s livelihoods. Many of these hotspots are in the central part of the Sahel, in Niger, Burkina Faso, northern and coastal Ghana, as well as northern Togo, Benin and Nigeria. Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), said regional co-operation will be key to diffusing tensions, managing risks and limiting the possibilities of increased conflict and migration – particularly northern pastoralists pushing south into regions used by farmers. […]