allAfrica.com: Niger: Africare Team Reflects on 35 Years of Work in Niger (Page 1 of 3)

As Africare celebrates its 35 year anniversary this week, representatives from the group's Niger program came to Washington to discuss the food crisis in the West African nation and the efforts underway to tackle hungre and promote development. Africare was established in 1970 in response to a previous famine in Niger and has since become one of the largest American non-governmental organizations working in Africa. Niger, which has a population of 11 million and ranked last on this year's United Nations development index, suffers periodic bouts of food shortage. This year's food crisis, due in part to drought and last year's locust attacks, has attracted some media attention but has recently been overshadowed by disasters in other parts of the world.

Al-Hassana Idriss Outman, Africare's Niger Country Representative, Aklou Sidi Sidi, Niger Project Coordinator, Myron Golden, Regional Director for the West Africa Region, and Marie Aughenbaugh, Administrative Officer, talk about Africare's anniversary, development programs, and the future of aid in Niger. Excerpts:

You are here 35 years after Africare first started working with a food crisis in Niger, and now there is a major drought again on your anniversary. What would you say has changed?

Golden: Well, Niger is a land-locked, Sahelian country and a large percentage of its terrain is desert. It's always going to be a challenge within the environment that exists there to have high levels of agricultural production. Since its independence in the 1960, Niger has been one of Africa's more stable countries in terms of political stability. It has, relative to its neighbors, a fair amount of infrastructure, and various governments have pretty much governed in an acceptable manner.

With all of that, the country remains one of the poorest on a per capita basis. Food production remains an issue for the country. Some of the same problems that created the drought in the early 1970's created the drought today, including: agricultural production, provision of hydraulic resources, and dealing with environmental degradation.

Outman: Well, I think the main problem is environment, because most of the land is sand and rocky area. Niger is a large country with 1.3 million square kilometers, but only 11 percent is exploitable, of which only three percent can be put into production. And over the years, as people put this three percent into production, if there is poor rainfall or natural disasters like the locusts of last year, the production is threatened.

Sidi: The differences are that during the drought of the 1970s there were no early-warning systems in place. That's the first difference. In the 70s there weren't many NGOs and there weren't any development agencies that could have foreseen crisis. In 1984 and during the 70s, the warning mechanisms weren't sufficiently developed.

On the other hand, during the crisis of this year, the crisis was anticipated by many different NGOs who were in place. To a degree, one had effectively prepared early-warning systems. However, there was a certain disconnect between the NGOs that were present, like Africare for example, reacting along with other NGOs to the coming crisis and the actual lack of action and reaction by the state to alert people of the actual crisis situation

This year's crisis does not have many of the same negative components compared to the crises of 1970 and 1984 because during those years, people actually lost their productive capital, especially their cattle. Therefore, these previous cases are examples of true famines because it was a matter of a pastoral zone where villages simply couldn't produce any food.

However, this year, there were many different causes for the crisis that simply combined and created the situation we saw: a locust invasion, bad rainfall, and also a weakening of agricultural production due to export-oriented farming.

Thus, these are the combined effects that led to the crisis in Niger this year. The crisis is not however systematic and ubiquitous but rather a matter of many separate "pockets of crises." The zones where Africare has been present, one can find a cadre of programs aimed to increase food security. These zones didn't experience the food crisis for the simple fact that they had already undertaken the necessary actions a priori.

The crisis was above all portrayed in Maradi where we hadn't been. Basically, the catastrophe affected many aspects of food security, primarily because it was a problem of malnutrition, especially of children, which MSF revealed.

Africare also responded to the crisis because these were areas not covered by the food security program. You see here the differences in how some people were prepared for a crisis as such and were prepared and knew when the crisis had arrived and the problem is one of state reaction. The NGOs knew that the crisis existed.

Golden: He's saying implicitly, 35 years ago there were no NGOs in place, there was no international presence. One of the differences this time was that some of the international community and those present in the country saw that the factors existing might lead to a drought and we were able to do something.

Since we were there and because we were able to take a lot of preventive measures in Agadez, especially with nutrition related to mothers and children, Agadez is not one of those places that was more stricken than others. This particular drought or crisis could have been mitigated if there were more NGOs in Niger doing what we are doing.

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