Niger
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"If you go to my grain store, you will see it is empty. We have no food until October." -- Hamani Fodi, Niger
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"The conditions were very, very bad - the worst I've seen in Niger" - Michel Monginda Mondengele, CAFOD
Niger is the largest country in Western Africa. Around 80 percent of it is covered by the Sahara desert and the non-desert parts frequently suffer droughts and food shortages.
Today Niger faces a severe food crisis, which is affecting more than 5 million people. We are working with our partner CADEV (Caritas Niger) to:
• Run nutrition centres for malnourished children
• Pay people in cash or food to work on projects that benefit their communities
• Support cereal banks that provide grain at subsidised prices
• Distribute food to the most vulnerable
• Organise seed fairs, so that farmers can plant in the next agricultural season.
We are also supporting refugees who have come into Niger from Libya and Mali as a result of conflict.
Imam Abdowlaye Boukary is currently living in a tiny shelter with his wife and two children, after their harvest failed. They left their home and travelled for four months till they reached the outskirts of Niger's capital, Niamey. They are now in a precarious position: Imam Boukary earns a small amount of money through casual labour, whilst his wife is forced to ask people for any leftover food they might have.
Working with our local partner CADEV-Niger, we have launched “cash-for-work” and “food-for-work” programmes in hundreds of villages like the Imam’s. Through these schemes, people are paid in money or food to work near their villages, improving their land and planting crops in the crucial weeks while it rains.
These programmes mean that people are able to survive near their villages: they are able to plant seeds, and they will have enough to eat until the next harvest in November. A cash-for-work project for a family like the Imam’s costs £32 in total. It’s a small sum to ensure that he and his family don’t live on one meal a day, in a shelter made from cardboard, for years to come.
