Rome, 15 July 2010–Amid a growing food crisis in the Sahel region in West Africa, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) announced today that a large number of families in the Maradi region of Niger are managing to sustain themselves by utilizing cereal banks. To reduce vulnerability and food insecurity in the regions affected by the food crisis, IFAD has promptly combined the efforts of two ongoing projects in the area: the Project for the Promotion of Local Initiative for Development and the Agricultural and the Community-based Development Program.

Mohamed Béavogui, Director of the West and Central Africa Division, on his return from Niger said: “IFAD is working to create better conditions in its agricultural programmes to be able to respond to the food crisis presently affecting the poorest rural populations in the country. We are responding quickly to refill the village granaries, as well as provide inputs such as seeds and small tools to be used for the upcoming planting season to increase the resilience of rural households to deal with a crisis of this scale.” Béavogui was in Niger to monitor ongoing projects as well as evaluate what steps need to be taken in the near future, beyond the emergency aid, to address the problem of food insecurity, malnutrition and rural poverty.

The fragile Sahel region is a narrow band south of the Sahara desert that includes Burkina Faso, Chad, Eritrea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Sudan. Recurrent crises have affected the region including a drought in the late 1960s to early 1980s and then again in 2005, which created a famine that killed a million people and affected another 50 million. Now, scant and irregular rainfall since last year has set off the latest crisis, with Niger at its centre where it is estimated that 7.1 million people are facing food insecurity. More specifically, 86 per cent of households in rural areas are at risk including herders, and women who are head of households and their dependents.

“IFAD is working closely with United Nations agencies and other partners to concretize the emerging policy dialogue for a new rural development strategy that will help generate structural changes and stop the recurrence of famine,” said Béavogui.

Severe food shortages have been triggered by drought, crop failure, pest infestations, increases in food prices and abject levels of poverty. Poor grazing land has forced most rural families to sell tools, seed, herds and flocks to enable them to buy what little food is available.

The situational analysis comes at a crucial moment when the seasonal rainy season is set to begin. In its long-term development support in Niger, IFAD has supported more than 51,500 women in six communes, or about 350,000 people through cereal banks. These were traditionally built to store crops immediately after harvest to allow farmers to sell during the dry season when market prices are higher. But with the food crisis deteriorating, the rural people in the project area are able to use the cereal banks to put food on their families’ table now in order to keep their strength to work on their farms.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), there has been a 30 per cent decline in cereal production in Niger compared with 2008, while forage production is 62 per cent below requirements. Meanwhile, food prices remain high, despite a decline from their peaks in 2008.

In September 2009, an IFAD-supported project was launched that helped rural people in Maradi to strengthen their ability to manage local affairs competently, particularly in relation to the planning, implementation and operation of investments that aim to improve households’ food security and living conditions. Since 1980, IFAD has mobilized funding for eight projects and programmes in Niger for a total funding of US$235.6 million.