Without a massive coordinated response from the international community, the rapidly growing food and nutrition crisis in the Sahelian countries of West Africa is likely to turn into a full blown famine. In recent weeks Oxfam, Tear Fund, and other international organizations have issued communiqués estimating that 12 million people face food insecurity, including six million people in Niger, nearly three million in Mali, over two million in Burkina Faso, and 700,000 – over quarter of the population – in Mauritania. The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates more than one million children in the Sahel may face “severe and life-threatening malnutrition” in 2012.
Severe food crises in the Sahel used to occur about every 10 years, but recently, for a variety of reasons including the impact of climate change, they are becoming much more frequent. Major food crises occurred in 2005, 2008 (due to high global food prices), and again in 2010. There is deep concern that for the most vulnerable households, who are only just starting to recover from 2010, this latest crisis will result in true humanitarian disaster.
Peter Gubbels and Fatou Batta, Groundswell Co-Coordinators for West Africa, visiting restored farm in Burkina Faso.
Countries in the Sahel suffered very low harvests this year, leading UN agencies and analysts to predict a 2.5 million ton cereal deficit in the region. Some of this deficit can be met by market flows from surplus areas, however, food prices in some places have increased by more than 80% over the five-year average, and have continued to rise rather than fall after this year’s harvest. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the price for millet, a basic staple crop for a majority of farm families, is 77% higher than the five-year average in the Malian capital Bamako; 93% higher in the northern city of Gao, and 85% higher in the central region of Ségou.
Even if prices were to stabilize, there would still be a major problem, as they are already unsustainably high for many poor rural households, who buy up to 60% of their food from the market. High food prices and poor terms of trade for the most vulnerable households put food out of their reach.
Response Must Address Roots Causes of Food Security and Malnutrition
Escaping the Hunger Cycle: Pathways to Resilience in the Sahel by Peter Gubbels
As recently stressed in the Sahel Working Group report (written by Groundswell International) entitled Escaping the Hunger Cycle; Pathways to Resilience in the Sahel, food insecurity in the Sahel this year is part of a persistent and predictable reservoir of chronic acute food insecurity affecting a predictable and growing portion of the region’s population. The responses of the aid community in 2005 and again in 2010 (while improved) failed to begin in time, causing millions of households to resort to extreme coping mechanisms. They sold off their assets, including productive ones, to buy food to survive for a few months, which compromised their ability to farm, produce food, and earn a living over the long term.
When aid finally did arrive, it was too little and too late. Aid appeals for West Africa are almost always under-funded; 37% of the 2011 request had come in by mid December, according to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Not only has the aid been insufficient and late, but it has focused almost exclusively on food aid, which does not address the underlying, long-term problems.
Groundswell and a number of aid agencies and analysts, strongly advocate a new type of response that takes into account the chronic, structural vulnerability of the Sahel. Instead of just providing food aid, the response from international organizations must focus on: promoting agro-ecological methods of farming, improving soil fertility, establishing water retention and tree cover better adapted to the changing climate, supporting measures to reduce the risk of predictable disasters, addressing the root causes of malnutrition, and providing long term social protection to the most vulnerable households.
The time to act is now. The lessons of 2005, 2008 and 2010 are clear. The challenge is to put them into practice in time to avert famine.