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Situation

Niger is the second poorest country in the world with 63% of its population living on less than $1.40 a day and its 11 million people being mainly dependent on subsistence agriculture.

Severe food shortage
In Niger, the locust swarms ravaged vast stretches of farm and grazing land, which together with localised drought and an early end to the rainy season, have contributed to create a national food security crisis.

A recent assessment by the Cellule de Crise Alimentaire . a government body - revealed a national net cereal deficit of over 223,000 tons. This equates to 100% of the 2004 crops in some areas.

Increases in food prices following the shortages in stock over the last years have resulted in nationwide protests and social unrest, as price hikes have made it impossible for poor families to feed their children. Food prices in March 2005 were 46% higher than in the same period in 2003.

A reduction in food consumption is taking place, with children showing signs of severe malnutrition, making them more vulnerable to disease and illness. An evaluation study has revealed that 42% of children under the age of 3 are undernourished.

Migration
People are migrating. They are leaving their villages in search of prospects for food and work in large cities as well as neighbouring countries like Ghana, Nigeria and Benin, causing disruption to the education of their children.

Plan's Response

Plan Niger has been working to improve food security in 14 villages Plan current works with in the devastated Tillabery region with approximately 3,111 families, focusing on ensuring relief nutrition to more than 9,000 children. In early June Plan signed a memorandum of understanding with UNICEF to support these children.s nutritional rehabilitation centers and food distribution for communities.

Plan is now expanding its emergency work to 68 villages in the region. The intensification of work will seek to target some 14,501 households - a total population of some 101,507 people. Each household is to receive 100 KG of rice. This will help maintain communities until the harvest season starts in October.

Where Plan works in Niger

Our activities include:

• Providing communities in the 14 affected villages with cereal, powder milk, spirulina, sugar, vitamin A and de-worming tablets
• The emergency feeding programme has been implemented benefiting 9,567 children between 6 months and 18 years of age
• Two women per community have been selected to assist in preparing lunch meals to be served daily at schools, encouraging families to keep their children at school and assisting with urgent food supplements for children
• These women have also received training on hygiene, breastfeeding, adequate supplementary feeding and general health and nutrition-related issues
• Communities have been provided with 70 tons of cereals, 7,500 litres of oil, sardine, salt and dry beans
• The emergency food relief is implemented in partnership with women's groups, school management committees and the local government
• Providing potable water through the creation of boreholes in 5 villages
• Micronutrients to primary school children is currently being distributed through schools and health centres - the micronutrients supplement protein, iron, zinc and vitamin to children

In the coming months

• Nutrition education will be provided via mobile cooking demonstrations, helping families to identify moderate malnourished children and set up a reference system for severely malnourished children
• For the next three months bags of rice will be distributed throughout 68 villages in the Tillabery area, where the situation is described as critical
• Plan is collaborating closely with the development committees in each village . responsible for managing the storage of cereals - and with the villages. women.s groups, responsible for the preparation of meals for primary schools. Plan's interventions are further co-ordinated with the local district authorities, the World Food Programme and other UN agencies operating in the area
• In order to ensure the most effective response Plan has been coordinating its efforts, together with the government in Niger, and will continue to form partnerships with other development agencies - such as Catholic Relief Services and Islamic Relief - to maintain a rapid response.

Plan's work forms part of a national strategy to avoid further loss of life, this includes mass cereal distribution in all departments to all families. Due to the nature of the crisis, authorisation has been given to suppliers to import rice from Asia.