Rally over dire food shortages
2005-06-02 19:10
Niamey - Thousands of people rallied on Thursday in the Niger capital to demand the distribution of free rations to stave off a food crisis that already threatens about three million people.
Shouting slogans such as "Famine and poverty are reality in Niger", around 3 000 demonstrators gathered in two separate locations early on Thursday morning before heading downtown towards parliament, which was in session.
Already among the world's poorest countries, the vast desert state's food supply travails have been compounded by years of drought and last year's invasion of desert locusts, the worst in more than a decade, which wiped out much of the country's cereal production.
Niger recorded a deficit of more than 200 000 tons of millet, maize and sorghum over the last harvest season, according to official statistics.
The United Nations (UN) issued an appeal last week for some $11m to tend to the food needs of Niger's 12 million citizens, warning that 800 000 people were already seriously malnourished, many of them children.
According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, 3.6 million people in the northwest African state are facing severe food shortages, in the center and the west of the massive country in particular.
"We are eating anza leaves, which normally we feed our cattle," said Habibou Yacoubou, an unemployed 43-year-old man.
"But now, even those leaves are going scarce, and besides, they make our children sick with diarrhea. We are hungry all the time, every day."
The UN request was followed at the weekend by an "anguished appeal" from Prime Minister Hama Amadou for urgent assistance to help some three million hungry people.
Demonstrators on Thursday also declaimed the government decision in January to raise taxes to 19% on staples such as milk, flour and sugar, which they said were a slap in the face to the already impoverished populations.
The rally also aimed to draw attention to the mistreatment of Fulani herders in the north who come under regular attack by nomadic Tuareg, who steal their cattle.