An estimated 10 million people from the Sahel region of West Africa are currently facing a food and nutritional crisis as a result of poor harvests caused by severe droughts.

The food crisis in West Africa is also having spill-over affects to other countries. Millet and Sorghum supplies in Northern Nigeria are falling fast to export to Niger where millions of people are facing food insecurity (IRIN News, June 2010).

Aid agencies are starting to respond but the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation has only received 20% of the funds it has requested so far. Most recently the World Food Programme reported suspension of flights with humanitarian food aid to three West African countries (Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia) due to a lack of funding. It has been unable to raise the $2.5 million required to continue operating until the end of this year (UN News, 14 June).

“The current food crisis, five years after the last emergency [in Niger], shows that without joint action between development and humanitarian actors in support of responsible Governments to deal with the structural issues, it will become increasingly difficult to contain these recurrent crises, which do so much to undermine economic and social progress in the Sahel,” said John Holmes, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, (All Africa, April 2010). 

It is hoped, however, that agencies will now respond quickly, and the Government in Niger along with local councils are taking steps for themselves; "The new government is not in denial, so the situation may not turn out to be as serious as in 2005," said Malek Triki, a WFP [World Food Programme] spokesman in Dakar. "The international community and the local authorities have been preparing for this." (Guardian, 3 June 2010)

For further information, please visit the Oxfam website.