Food trickling into Niger

2005-08-02 10:49

Tahoua - Food aid is beginning to arrive in the famine-stricken areas of Niger but in inadequate amounts and not always in the form that starving families need.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and various non-governmental organisations said on Monday they had started distributing supplies sent by the WFP.

Free food was being distributed on Monday in several villages in the Tahoua region, 550km northeast of the capital Niamey, in one of a number of targeted operations.

A long, slow process

But the process is painfully slow: it takes several days to truck the supplies to the NGOs' depots and from there out to the villages.

In Barmou, about 30km north of Tahoua, the British NGO Concern handed out rations of high-energy protein-enriched biscuits and bags of enriched flour to 180 mothers of "moderately" malnourished children.

But many mothers left empty-handed, there is only food for children judged to be "moderately at risk".

Supplies of food for families that can number eight people have not arrived.

The programme was continuing on Monday to send out truckloads of emergency food aid flown into Niamey at the end of last week, including 70 tons of protein-fortified biscuits.

Distributing food

Over the next few days it plans to distribute to NGOs working in the vast northwest African country more than 4 000 tons of food destined for the areas hardest hit by the famine, including 2 000 tons of rice and 500 tons of pulses.

By the end of September it plans to have sent 23 000 tons of food aid to the 1.6 million people judged to be especially vulnerable.

Among the NGOs responsible for food distribution are Concern, Islamic Help, Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), Save the Children and the International Federation of Red Cross societies.

Drought and a plague of locusts which ravaged crops and grazing land in Niger left the country short of 224 000 tons of cereals, or 10% of the total, last year.

Near Keita, about 50km east of Tahoua, the Spanish humanitarian organisation ACF-Spain was due to distribute on Tuesday rations of enriched flour to "moderately malnourished" children.

A crisis situation

In the coming days it hopes to extend its operations to include whole families in 19 villages in the region.

"This is an emergency," said ACF director general Benoit Miribel. "We have to act fast. It is the poorest and the most dependent who are the most vulnerable, those who have no more money, who are selling their possessions."

There are no official figures for the number of dead. The UN reckons that 3.5 million of Niger's 12 million inhabitants are threatened by famine.

Experts say the extent of the famine is hidden because at present it only affects the most vulnerable, above all children under the age of five. "There are groups of people who are only eating once a day," Miribel said. "We must not wait for things to get worse."

- AFP