West Africa: Food security crisis deepens

 In Lolibaye Na Oulad Yare village, southwestern Mauritania, even one meal a day has become a luxury that many families cannot afford.

Many families' food supplies are running low, and prices in the market are sky-rocketing.

Mariama Mbojah — a woman in her late 30s whose husband is blind and cannot work — says she is finding it difficult to feed her three children.

“Even today as we speak, they are going to sleep on an empty stomach,” she says.

Stories like Mariama’s are common throughout West Africa, which is currently facing a severe food shortage following poor rains.

“We’re seeing parents forced to make decisions about the safety or education of one child to feed another,” says Paul Sitnam, emergency director with World Vision in West Africa.

“For some families, getting through the crisis means choosing which child will get to eat that night and which will have to wait with an empty belly until the next day.”

In previous years, people have had five to 10 years to recover from droughts and severe food shortages. 

This developing crisis hits some areas less than two years since their last drought.

“There is little resilience in communities who are already food poor,” says Chance Briggs, national director for World Vision in Mali.

“Just months after Mali’s harvest, many family granaries are almost empty and local food distribution centres have no access to surplus grains. Food prices are twice as high as they were last year.”

The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS-NET) predicts that food insecurity will begin to rise to “crisis levels” as early as March 2012 and is calling for targeted food assistance for at least the next six months.

World Vision urges the international community to take action now so the situation doesn’t become as deadly as the famine and drought in the Horn of Africa.

World Vision is working in Niger, Mali, Mauritania, and Chad to address the food shortages.

World Vision’s emergency response includes:

• Life-saving nutrition programs for children.
• Free food distribution to low-income families.
• Vaccinating livestock to preserve families’ livelihoods.
• Distributing seeds to farmers.
• Drilling additional wells to increase access to clean water.

With reporting by World Vision communications officers Jonathan Bundu, Laura Blank, and Lauren Fisher.