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Food starts arriving in Niger
31/07/2005 11:27 - (SA)
Maradi, Niger - Food by the truckload is finally reaching remote northern Niger, eight months after the first pleas for help for the hungry.
A locust invasion last year followed by drought has left a third of the population in this already desperately poor west African nation at risk of malnutrition or worse, with children the most vulnerable. But repeated UN appeals beginning in November went unanswered until the situation reached crisis.
French foreign minister Philippe Douste-Blazy, visiting the capital Niamey on Saturday, chided the international community for its "indifference and avarice" toward hunger-struck Niger. France said it was tripling some aid to Niger, its former colony.
On Thursday and Friday, 278 metric tons (306 tons) of beans and oil were delivered to Concern International in Tahoua, some 400 kilometres northwest of Maradi, the eastern town that has become a hub for aid agencies.
In the World Food Program's warehouse located in Maradi's Ali Dansofho neighbourhood, some 2 000 metric tons (2 200 tons) of sorghum bought in Nigeria and 41 metric tons (45 tons) of vegetable oil and 69 metric tons (76 tons)of beans are ready to be dispatched. Various aid agencies will distribute the WFP stocks.
'Things have been crazy'
"Things have been crazy over the past few days," said Ibrahim Badamassi, regional co-ordinator of the World Food Program in Maradi, while keeping a watchful eye on the dozens of men loading two trucks ready to leave for Tahoua.
A transportation and loading order from the WFP office in Niamey reached Badamassi by fax on July 29 and in the afternoon, the first truckload was delivered to the warehouse of the Agency for Muslims in Africa, an aid group working in this overwhelmingly Muslim country. In all, the agency will receive 250 metric tons (275 tons) of sorghum.
"We thank God, even if the food came a little late," said Mohammed Abdoulaye of the Agency for Muslims in Africa, while opening the storage room to show the already depleting resources, just enough to last a couple of weeks, he said.
"There is still hope for many more hungry people and even enough to go beyond the next harvest," due in October, said Abdoulaye.
Since July, the agency's feeding centre in Maradi alone has admitted some 700 mothers and children, feeding them every day, up to five meals per malnourished child.
"With what we just received, we can do even more, send the mothers home with some extra food," Abdoulaye said, as a group of women, some wearing long veils, pounded sorghum or stirred pots filled with rice for lunch.
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