It’s 19-month-old Osman Abdi’s third day in Save the Children’s stabilisation centre. It all begun with what mothers in this area refer to as a ‘normal cough’, which usually lasts a few days then disappears. But time failed to bring reprieve and Osman broke a fever. Although his illnesses have sucked the little life left in him, there’s a reason to smile.
Rising food prices over the last year have put the lives of 400,000 children at risk, in advance of the G20 summit in Cannes our director of policy has warned.
We saw this disaster coming as early as last year. There’s a warning system in place, fed by satellite imagery, rainfall measurements and crop growth figures. Food prices have been rising for years. Save the Children was already trucking in emergency water supplies in February. But the fate of many of the children now malnourished was already sealed. We have a broken humanitarian system based on responding, not preventing.
It’s a collective failure. Aid agencies go to huge lengths to prepare the communities they work with to adapt to droughts and other shocks, but there’s a limit to what they can do to raise money from governments and the UN in the early stages of a crisis. It’s very hard to talk up a situation before it becomes a full-blown emergency.
In the UK, it rains heavily and it’s annoying. In Niger it rains heavily and – if you’re poor, and you probably are – it’s economic breakdown.
In Niger’s bustling capital, Niamey, it’s easy to forget that more than 80 percent of people in this country are dependent on the land for food and their livelihood.
Most are extremely poor – a combination of regular poor harvests which yield little and a hand to mouth existence when the harvests are good.
I’ve just met a Nigerien woman in the capital, Niamey, who is determined to challenge the unscrupulous traders who are partially behind the high prices of millet – the staple here – and other grain which is playing an important part in the severe food crisis which is devastating this country.
Today is the 50th anniversary of Niger’s independence from France and there’s a party mood in the capital, Niamey. The office is closed, Ramadan begins in about a week, and people are taking the chance to have fun.
During the last eight weeks, while I’ve been in Niger, I’ve often been overwhelmed by the scale of the problems people face here. It’s not just the current food crisis and the number of people who are going hungry now but also the future and what this has in store.
It’s always a bit strange meeting someone whose voice you’ve heard so often on the radio but never seen what they look like in the flesh. Before meeting Mike Thomson – reporter for BBC Radio 4 Today Programme – I did a quick google on him to find a picture. In reality the picture didn’t look like him at all so it wasn’t much help!
Even in the short time I’ve been in Niger, I’ve noticed that there are an increasing number of women and children begging at the crossroads in Niamey. The worrying thing is that the situation is getting worse.
