Nearly 25million people food insecure in Sahel

Dakar — Food security and malnutrition rates across the
Sahel are deteriorating, due in large part to ongoing conflict
and instability in the Central African Republic (CAR),
northern Mali, and northeast Nigeria, according to the UN
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Nearly five million more people have joined the ranks of the
food insecure since the beginning of the year, bringing the
estimated total to 24.7 million - more than double the
number in 2013, says OCHA.
"The dramatic rise in insecurity across the region over the
last year has generated a tremendous number of people that
need to be fed and housed and given health care, because
they've been ripped from their livelihoods, as well as their
homes," said Robert Piper, the UN regional humanitarian
coordinator for the Sahel. "It has also, of course, had an
impact on the market and some food prices."
Negative coping mechanisms
Some 6.5 million people have crossed the emergency
threshold from being moderately food insecure to facing an
acute food and livelihood crisis. This is four million more
people in this category than in January.
"There's a big difference between Phase 2 [moderately food
insecure], where you are food insecure but using coping
mechanisms to deal with it, and Phase 3 [acute food and
livelihood crisis], where you have started to use negative
coping mechanisms that have potentially very long-term
negative consequences," Piper said.
Negative coping mechanisms include taking out a loan that
must be repaid from profits from the following year's
harvest, eating seeds that should be saved for next year's
planting season, and reducing the number of daily meals
from three down to two, or even one.
"It becomes a very slippery slide, and one that is of great
concern to us," Piper said.
Food production
Experts say it is still too early to determine what the final
crop output will look like this year, but late and erratic rains
across much of the region meant many seeds were lost
before they had a chance to sprout. Others never had the
chance to finish their growth cycles, according to the UN's
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
"We are still monitoring the situation, as there are many
variables [such as how long the rains will last and who
managed to produce what crops] that need to be monitored
to see what the future will hold in terms of harvest at the
end of this agricultural season," said Patrick David, FAO's
deputy coordinator for food security analysis for West Africa
and the Sahel. "But the trend is worrying in some areas."
A preliminary joint assessment by the World Food
Programme (WFP) and FAO in late August found that record
rainfall deficits, which were recorded along the Atlantic
Coast - from southern Mauritania south to Guinea Bissau,
as well as northern Ghana, Benin and Togo - negatively
affected agricultural activities.
In some areas, such as Côte d'Ivoire, Mali and Niger, the
rain fell heavily, causing crop and flood damage.
In others, the rains came early, lasted briefly, and then
disappeared for a long time. Those farmers who had the
means to reseed did, but many others, who did not, could
not.
While most crops are expected to reach full maturity across
much of the region following the start of steady rains across
the region at the end of July, overall production is expected
to be less than the five-year average in Guinea Bissau,
Gambia, Senegal and Mauritania, according to WFP.
CAR is also expected to have below-average food
production this year due to ongoing civil conflict, which has
interrupted agricultural activities in many areas, says the
Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET).
Food Prices
Average food prices across the region, with the exception of
meat, fell for the fifth consecutive month in August,
according to the latest data from FAO's food price index.
Cereal prices averaged 11.7 percent below the average in
August 2013.
The WFP says, however, that prices in some markets in
Mali, Chad and Senegal, are higher than average due to a
longer than usual lean season this year. Market prices have
also risen in Niger's Diffa region, due to the continued
arrival of refugees from Nigeria.
"This [increased food prices] is certainly having an impact
on many households, and can really affect the food security
of the most vulnerable households," David said.
While the Ebola outbreak has not yet directly affected food
prices in the Sahel, border closings and movement
restrictions have impacted trade flows, particularly along
Senegal's border with Guinea, where the closure of 16
markets have reduced trade volume by up to 50 percent,
WFP says.
Pastoralists
Due to the late onset of rains in areas such as Mauritania,
northern Niger, Chad, Senegal and northern Cameroon,
pastoralists had a much longer lean season than usual in
2014.
"They were waiting for their pasture, because as soon as
the rains come, of course the fodder starts to grow, and then
animals get fed and there is a supply of drinking water,"
Piper said. "But they had to wait a very, very long time this
year."
Some of the animals died. Others never became large or
healthy enough to sell for a decent profit.
"We've now left the period of hardship for the pastoralists
and this situation has improved some," David said. "But
they passed a very difficult time in certain zones and it's
possible that this will affect the incomes of those that were
most vulnerable."
The security situation in CAR - a key frontier for the
movement of animals into and out of the Sahel and northern
Nigeria, and a key market for buying and selling animals -
also meant that many pastoralists were unable to follow
their normal trade routes.
Nutrition
There are now more than 6.4 million acutely malnourished
children under the age of five in the Sahel, including 1.6
million who are severely malnourished and 4.8 million who
are moderately malnourished, according to OCHA.
"Malnutrition is stubbornly high and remains high in all the
countries, but has deteriorated significantly at the moderate
levels in northeast Nigeria," Piper said, adding that around
1.4 million more children have become malnourished since
the beginning of the year.
The majority of this increase comes from northeastern
Nigeria, where ongoing violence and conflict between Boko
Haram, Nigerian security forces and civilian militias
continues to displace people in considerable numbers.
There are now an estimated 1.5 million displaced people in
Nigeria, according to OCHA - mostly women and children.
Funding shortfall
More than US$1.9 billion is needed to meet humanitarian
needs in the Sahel this year, up from 1.7 billion in 2013 and
1.6 billion in 2012, OCHA reports.
As of 17 October, OCHA's Strategic Response Plan (SRP)
appeal was just 39 percent funded. An additional $300
million has been pledged outside the SRP towards Sahel
projects, bringing the total funded appeal to an estimated
50 percent.
"Over a billion dollars has been committed towards the
Sahel thus far, but the bottom line is, the numbers keep
going up and so our budget keeps going up as result," Piper
said. "It is clearly insufficient for the task this year and has
forced us to make some severe cuts in some parts of some
programmes," Piper said.
This includes reducing rations to refugee groups,
suspending assistance to pregnant and lactating mothers in
certain countries, and making choices between urgent
lifesaving measures and important, but often overlooked
preventive long-term needs, such as investment in water
and sanitation programmes.
"There is a growing body of people across the region that
are so acutely vulnerable, that it only takes a small push for
them to go from just coping to crisis," Piper said. "This
represents a humanitarian crisis but also a governance
crisis and also much more profound structural development
challenges. So it's these issues that need to be addressed
successfully in order to start turning these trends around."
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the
United Nations.]