More than 18m people in Niger, Mauritania, Mali, Chad & Burkina Faso face struggle for food.
The Disasters Emergency Committee is extremely concerned about the worsening food crisis in the Sahel region of West Africa. There are more than 18 million people under threat in arid areas of Mauritania, Niger, Mali, Chad and Burkina Faso (click for a larger version of the map shown on the right). Erratic rainfall has contributed to a lack of grazing for animals and below average harvests in some areas. This in turn has resulted in unseasonably high market prices for grain, putting staple foods increasingly out of reach for many people.
Every year is a struggle for survival in the Sahel and many communities have not really recovered from the last food crisis in 2010. In some countries the situation is further complicated by conflict. In Mali there has been a coup and rebel groups have taken control of the north of the country. Over 420,000 people are reported to have been displaced within the country or two neighbouring states. The recent violence in northern Nigeria and Libya has also reduced the ability of people from neighbouring countries to seek work within the region. Many families have long been dependent on income from migrant workers to buy food when times are hard.
The food crisis is expected to continue to deteriorate until at least September 2012 when the next main harvest is due. Following the collective failure to launch a sufficiently strong pre-emptive response to the 2011 food crisis in East Africa (guest post from award-winning Oxfam blogger) there has been a high level of international concern about the situation this year in the Sahel. Some donors have already stepped up their contributions and the UN publishes details of what donors have given to all international emergency appeals. Many DEC agencies have been extremely active in raising the alarm and are using the funds available to them to begin to scale up their responses. All our member agencies now have active appeals, links below.
The Disasters Emergency Committee is closely monitoring the situation and is actively liaising with its member agencies and will continue to review the developing situation against its appeal criteria.
ActionAid - West Africa Food Crisis Appeal
Age International: - Emergency in West Africa Appeal
British Red Cross - West Africa Food Crisis Appeal
CAFOD - West Africa Food Crisis
CARE International - West Africa Crisis
Christian Aid - West Africa Food Crisis Appeal
Concern - West Africa Crisis
Islamic Relief - West Africa Appeal
Merlin - West Africa Food Crisis Appeal
Oxfam - West Africa Appeal
Plan UK - Niger Appeal
Save the Children - West Africa Appeal
Tearfund - West Africa Food Crisis 2012
World Vision - West Africa Food Crisis Appeal
Comments
Rosalind
Posted at 11.53 pm on 23/03/12
The impending Sahel crisis has been exacerbated by the pathcy 2011 monsoon reason set against a backdrop of political instability and a very wet 2010 monsoon. We have been following this closely at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science and recently published a paper in the March 2012 issue of Weather, the Royal Meteorological Society's Journal (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wea.1896/pdf), discussing this (note - its targeted at a general readership). To improve the provisioning of accessible and relevant climate information, the climate science community are beginning to work more closely with NGO and government policy makers in Sub-Saharan Africa, through AfClix, the Africa Climate Exchange and its supporting portal (www.afclix.org). The paper also highlights the success of Rainwatch in providing a near real-time visual monitoring of the rainy season. This helped prompt the Niger government to take earlier action in August 2011 to mobilise resource for the country. Please contact me for a pdf copy of the paper or further info about AfClix activities on the ground in Africa.
Nalliah Thayabharan
Posted at 01.32 pm on 18/06/12
Food is life. We have unvarying tendency to over produce profitable items due to our greed but under produce what is really needed. We have to replace greed with need. We should grow diverse perennial vegetation. Annual grain monocultures should be replaced with polycultures of perennial grains and oil seeds.
Wheat raises blood sugar higher than most of the other foods. 4 slices of whole wheat bread raise blood sugar higher than 12 teaspoons of sugar. That’s a simple fact as per the table of glycemic index.
Almost all wheat in USA is from a dwarf strain, which produces a far greater yield but has contributed to the current obesity epidemic.
Alex Lenferna
Posted at 02.40 pm on 19/10/12
Rosalind, your paper sounds very interesting. I am currently doing research into aid and climate change in the Sahel, and I would be very interested in getting hold of it. However, I can't get access to it on Wiley as I am having problems registering. If you see this please email the paper to me on alexlenferna@gmail.com
Thanks in advance.
SOMEONE
Posted at 10.05 pm on 04/03/13
Crisis like this happen most because of desertification. Which means it washes away top soil which produces food.When the topsoil is washed away they cant make food which leads to starvation, or as is called hunger.
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