Background

“The world must respond immediately to avert a full-scale food and nutrition crisis.”

- Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food

Across West Africa, conditions are now converging into a food crisis affecting millions of people in the region. Low rainfall and water levels, poor harvests, a lack of pasture for animals, and high food prices are putting increased pressure on countless families.

This fragile region of semi-arid grasses and desert known as the Sahel has suffered increasing ecological stress including drought. Profound hardship has been the consequence for people here: They have endured three major food crises in seven years and are still recovering from the last in 2010 which affected 10 million people, many of them farmers and herders.

As the lean season between harvests approaches its climax, the crisis is deepening.

Surveys indicate that more than 3.5 million people in Mali and 850,000 in Senegal are living in vulnerable areas, and that food insecurity is already affecting 5.5 million people in Niger,  700,000 in Mauritania (more than a quarter of the population), 2 million in Burkina Faso,  3.6 million in Chad, and more than 700,000 in the Gambia.

Overall, cereal production in the region is 25% lower than last year - with double the shortfall in Mauritania and Chad. Coupled with reduced harvests are high prices for key cereals—30-60% percent higher than the five-year average, which is a serious hurdle in a region where 60 percent of people buy their food in the markets.