The food situation in Sahelian Africa is dramatic. The UN alerted this Friday on this situation while the organization needs nearly 500 million additional dollars (about 441 million euros) to rescue more than 10.5 million starving people.
According to the UN World Food Program (WFP), the number of people on the brink of starvation in the semi-arid Sahelian belt has increased almost tenfold over the past three years. Of these approximately 10.5 million people, 1.1 million are at a critical emergency stage in five countries: Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.
“A growing food crisis”
The UN agency adds that it needs 470 million dollars to continue its food aid operations there over the next six months. “The WFP is alarmed by the worsening food crisis across the Sahel,” said one of its spokespersons in Geneva, Tomson Phiri.
“The region is facing a growing and complex food crisis”, more severe than previous ones under the combined effects of conflicts, Covid, climatic hazards and rising prices, “which deprive millions of people of basic meals “, he underlined.
Price increase
Food prices have thus increased by 30%, and the region has experienced unprecedented droughts since 2011, according to Tomson Phiri. But “while the needs are at their highest, the resources to support the most vulnerable are at their lowest”, which forces the WFP to “take from those who are hungry to feed others even more hungry”, he said. -He underlines.
In Niger, for example, due to insufficient funds, the WFP says it has cut food rations in half, affecting 1.4 million people in need. In 2021, WFP and its partners assisted 9.3 million people in the 5 countries concerned. The UN agency says it has also transformed more than 110,000 hectares of sterile fields into fertile land, working with local communities.