By Rebekah Mintzer
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| A crowd tries to enter a feeding center in Maradi, Niger during the 2005 food crisis. (Photo credit: Flickr user liquidslave/Creative Commons) |
Imminent food shortages will add more pressure to a country where many people already live in miserable conditions. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Index for 2009 rated Niger as the poorest country in the world. According to the website of the World Food Programme (WFP), 59.5 percent of the population of Niger lives below the poverty line.
“Niger is facing a structural state of high acute malnutrition and has one of the highest rates of population increase in the world. It also has a harsh environment, made even worse by climate change and the poor management of environmental resources,” Malek Triki, public information officer for the WFP told MediaGlobal.
The immediate cause of the problem is the unusually short rainy season Niger experienced in 2009. The harvest cycle in Niger begins during the spring season when the planting is done and crops grow over the course of the summer rainy season to be harvested in the autumn. However, rain fell too sporadically during the last growing season’s drought, hampering the ability to grow food for harvest in the fall. Since most Nigeriens survive on subsistence agriculture, many did not grow enough to feed their families until October 2010, when the next harvest will come. Nomadic groups within the country also have had difficulty raising their cattle and other livestock with little food for these animals to eat.
“Following the publication of the Niger government figures, which show a deterioration in food security, WFP plans to initially meet the needs of 850,000 people from March to October with a view towards significantly increasing that number — doubling it at least – to feed 1.7 million people and possibly more,” said Triki, “These increases will come on top of the WFP ongoing country programme operations, which are currently meeting the food needs of 1.25 million people in Niger.”
This is not the first time in recent years that Niger has experienced food insecurity on a large scale. In 2005, a food insecurity crisis in Niger gained worldwide attention and prompted a similar UN plea for help. Some international organizations and new outlets concluded that the 2005 crisis was caused by drought and locust infestation and a resulting lack of crops to harvest. Others countered that skyrocketing food prices and bad policymaking, not a poor harvest, caused the crisis.
“The extent of crops and pastures loss is pretty similar to what happened in 2004,” Jean Senahoun, Economist for the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) told MediaGlobal.“But what is different this year, I will say the improvement is that there seem to be a shared understanding of the problem; the government also seemed to be more transparent, having shared a contingency plan with other stakeholders.”
However, increasing the uncertainty about Niger’s situation is an underlying change in the country’s governance. An 18 February military coup ousted President Mamadou Tandja and shifted the balance of power in Niger. It is unknown at this time whether the coup will impact the government’s call for aid or ability to implement it on the ground.
