• Drought: tragedy in Niger Drought: tragedy in Niger St. Louis Post-Dispatch The Midwest is suffering through a drought, but it pales in comparison to a dual catastrophe of biblical proportions gripping Niger. Severe drought scorched the country’s crops, then
• Drought: tragedy in Niger
Drought: tragedy in Niger
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
The Midwest is suffering through a drought, but it pales in comparison to a dual catastrophe of biblical proportions gripping Niger. Severe drought scorched the country’s crops, then locusts moved in and feasted on what was left.
Last November, international aid groups began sounding the alarm for food assistance to help millions of people in Niger, located in Africa’s Sahel region south of the Sahara desert. Niger and the United Nations appealed to international donors for $16 million in emergency aid. But any sense of urgency this appeal might have generated was overshadowed a month later by the deadly tsunami that rolled across the Pacific and claimed 178,000 victims, most of them in Indonesia.
Some of the chronic hunger and starvation now gripping Niger might have been staved off had the wealthy nations of the world acted earlier. But aid workers say these nations provided virtually no assistance even after it became clear that Niger would experience its worst harvest in years. Niger’s president, Mamadou Tandja, didn’t help matters by denying his nation was facing a crisis that has now left over one-third of its population at risk.
Although aid is finally reaching Niger, it comes too late to save thousands of malnourished children often seen strapped to the backs of mothers walking for miles across cracked brown earth in search of food and medical assistance. More than 800,000 of these youngsters are now at risk of acute malnutrition; 30,000 more are said to be severely malnourished. UNICEF is hoping to get nearly $15 million for Niger by the end of the year to supplement 7,000 tons of food given this year by international agencies.
The dramatic surge in hunger in Niger is aggravated by factors beyond locusts and lack of rain. One is Niger’s structural economic changes being carried out under pressure from the International Monetary Fund. These changes include moving away from subsidized food by imposing a 19-percent value added tax on basic food-stuffs, such as millet. Unfortunately, experts say a 50-year drying cycle in the Sahel is likely to continue and appears to be linked to substantial warming of the Indian Ocean. That’s one reason the region must learn to do more to control its destiny. Food aid is essential in the short term, but the United Nations and donor nations can help Niger cope with drought and hunger by doing more to address the region’s primitive farmer and social conditions. Convincing the nation to move away from subsistence farming – growing only enough food to sustain themselves until the next harvest – would ease some of the ongoing malnutrition and starvation.
In spite of hardships and subsisting on an average of less than $1 a day, the people in Niger have generous hearts. After the tsunami struck in South Asia, Nigeriens donated $250,000 to the victims. The world should be generous to Niger as it tries to cope with its own ongoing natural disaster.
