A land forgotten but not gone

Niger is in the midst of a food crisis – and a cash-short Unicef is now struggling to help – but without an environmental disaster or other striking event to jolt the world's attention, the country is too often overlooked, writes MARK COUGHLAN

RACHIDA ABDOULAYE sits cross-legged beneath the dense leaves of an acacia tree. Her 11-month-old daughter, Chafana, lies listlessly in her arm. Like the 400 or so other mothers outside this treatment centre in southern Niger, they’re waiting to see a doctor. Rachida says Chafana has been vomiting and has diarrhoea. The child’s prominent ribcage lifts and lowers slowly. It appears almost too heavy for her labouring lungs. Her foot hangs over her mother’s wrist, the toenails painted a girlie green. She is acutely malnourished.

Thousands of mothers and babies find themselves in the same situation throughout the region. In Niger this time of year is known as hunger season. The months farthest from the last harvest, usually between May and September, are when many families’ food supplies have run out. Children under five years old are in particular danger of becoming malnourished.

Dr Omar Maidadja runs a small hospital outside Zinder, the main regional town. He and his colleagues expect to have attended to 10,000 malnourished children in the five months to September. The figures are up by nearly a third on last year. According to Unicef, more than 600,000 children under the age of two in Niger will require food aid this year to avoid malnourishment. Nearly 100,000 of these will suffer severe acute malnutrition. In total, seven million Nigeriens will be affected.

And this week Unicef was forced to make the “agonising” decision to suspend food aid to families with children over the age of two because of a huge funding shortfall. A weak harvest caused by dry weather after last year’s planting season has left parents and NGOs straining to keep children healthy and fed.

Last year’s particularly poor harvest hasn’t changed things all that much, however. Niger is perpetually verging on crisis. Year after year mothers struggle to feed their children. The infant mortality rate is among the world’s highest: one in 10 newborns will die before the age of five. Every woman can expect to lose one child in her lifetime; some will lose more. Most of these deaths will be from malnutrition, but even now, after the weak harvest, food is not scarce. In certain cases, for children with avoidable sicknesses, it’s not beneficial. For others, it’s unobtainable.

A number of issues combine to form Niger’s food crisis. Manipulative trading can make food too expensive for some families. For others, widely held superstitions stop mothers from giving their children certain nutrient-rich foods, for fear of negative consequences. Poor hygiene causes serious sickness; this can be especially damaging to newborns whose immune systems have been weakened by lack of nutrition. Unpredictable weather means drought and flooding can arrive within months of each other.

Adam Djibou, an economist working with Goal, the charity that has arranged my trip, explains how local traders inflate the price of food. “Last year, when they saw the rains didn’t come, they bought up much of the crop that could be harvested. Then they kept it,” he says. “When people’s own supplies had run out the traders put some food to market, but not all. That way the price would stay up.

They do this to make the profit; that is their objective.” With the cost of food kept high, people are priced out of the market.

In many villages eggs are the only consistently available source of protein, but some mothers believe that if their children eat them they will grow up to be thieves. Similarly with colostrum, the thick nutritious milk a mother produces in the days after giving birth. It’s dirty, people believe. Aid agencies try to combat these damaging myths by educating mothers in groups as their children receive treatment.

Improving basic sanitation is another goal. Doing so can greatly reduce the chances of disease spreading. Nurses in food therapy clinics and hospitals teach mothers and older children – who are often one and the same – how to keep their child healthy after they’ve been discharged. Boil water before drinking; wash your breast before feeding; clean your hands after going to the toilet. Such lessons can be invaluable. They mean the nutrients in the foods children do eat aren’t as likely to go to waste through vomiting or diarrhoea.

But it’s difficult to change cultural beliefs and social practices when fewer than 20 per cent of women are literate, and not all attend clinics. Aid workers are trying; Goal says it’s here as long as funding allows.

Then there’s the changing climate. Niger’s first serious food crisis of this generation came in the early 1970s. The next wasn’t for 20 years, according to Mohammed Suso, a soil scientist in Zinder. He says a bad harvest is expected every five years now.

Intensified desertification and increasingly unpredictable rainfall are making crop returns less certain. In a country were most are subsistence farmers, such uncertainty can be life-threatening. Moura Lawaly, a farmer working his field two hours’ drive outside Zinder, explains how his family is coping after last year’s harvest. “My field produced no food. We are managing; we manage; my wife picks dilo and the children eat it.” Dilo is bitter fruit that must be soaked in water for a week before eating. It has minimal nutritional value. “It is as bad as in 2005,” he continues, “but the next harvest will be better, if the rains are good.”

The year 2005 was when many aid agencies realised the extent of the problems in Niger. Farmers seem to see it as something of a benchmark of a bad year. They remain optimistic, believing that things can’t stay like this forever.

Such a myriad of long-term issues means there will be no overnight or even five-year solution in Niger. Even children who recover from malnutrition in early life are at greater risk of serious health problems years later. This also adds to the list of issues to be addressed.

A new transitional government has recognised there are serious problems – a fact their predecessors refused to accept. It says it will work with aid agencies to develop a cohesive health system and minimise malnutrition. NGOs in the region appear to have no plans to leave soon.

Over the course of a few hours Rachida carries Chafana through the stages of treatment at the food therapy centre. She is given Plumpy’nut, a fortified peanut butter for use in famine relief, while Médecins sans Frontières doctors in the intensive-care ward monitor the situation. Despite her worrying condition, they expect her to make a strong recovery. Many children do if they can get the right treatment. Not all will be as lucky as Chafana.