U N I T E D  N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN) - 

[These reports do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

CONTENT:

1 - MAURITANIA: Locust alert in northwest
2 - WEST AFRICA: Boom-bust cycle of hunger rolls on


1 - MAURITANIA: Locust alert in northwest

NOUAKCHOTT, 10 October (IRIN) - Swarms of desert locusts have been sighted in 
the remote northwest Mauritanian province Inchiri, 250 km west of the capital 
Nouakchott, raising fears of a locust invasion at the height of the growing 
season.

Just a small swarm of locusts can eat as much food in a day as 2,500 people.

According to the National Locust Centre of Mauritania, the locusts are 
currently in the mating stage and have been laying eggs, with hatchings 
expected to occur in the next 10 days.

"These first stages seem to indicate that these are locusts similar to those 
observed since the beginning of the year in different areas. We believe that 
they are a native species," Mohamed Abdalahi Ould Babah, director at the 
centre, said.

There is concern in Mauritania that this new batch of locusts will continue to 
spread. Vegetation is flourishing as the normally desert-country bristles with 
maize and sorghum crops at the end of a strong growing season. The affected 
zone has high levels of humidity which encourages locust breeding, experts said.

Three units of ground treatment and nine canvassing teams have been deployed, 
including five to the affected region, which is considered an area of prime 
grazing land for cattle breeders.

"A military plane has also been mobilised but at the moment the area requiring 
treatment is not large enough to warrant its use," said Ould Babah. 

The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) is sending a helicopter to help 
survey larger areas that are difficult to reach by land. 

"Adjacent countries have been alerted," said Wen Mullier of FAO in West Africa. 
Survey teams will be monitoring Senegal, Mali, Niger, and the southern parts of 
Morocco and Algeria, which all could potentially be affected. 

The FAO said it will use the situation to do field trials of a bio-pesticide 
called Green Muscle.

A major outbreak of locusts in West Africa in 2004 stripped agricultural land 
throughout the desperately poor region at the height of the harvest season, 
leaving many of the region's subsistence farmers with nothing to eat for the 
year ahead.

Since January 2005, few locusts have been sighted in Mauritania and only a few 
hundred hectares of land have been treated.

mpo/kdd/nr

[ENDS]


2 - WEST AFRICA: Boom-bust cycle of hunger rolls on

DAKAR, 10 October (IRIN) - Aid agencies are optimistic that harvests will be 
good in most of the Sahel this year, but warn there are pockets of failed 
crops, and that donor funds are still lacking for the projects that would nudge 
Africans away from their precarious dependence on foreign aid and erratic 
rainfall.

"Following a good end to the rainy season in the Sahel, forecasts for cereal 
production for this year are optimistic, but there continue to be localised 
crop failures that contribute directly to high rates of malnutrition," the 
World Food Programme (WFP) said in a statement on Monday.

The Washington-based famine early warning system (FEWS) food security 
monitoring group confirmed in a report in late September that the outlook for 
the region in 2007 is "generally good" after an average or above average 
harvest this year.

The Sahel is a semi-arid belt that stretches from Mauritania in West Africa to 
Somalia in East Africa, dividing the Sahara's southern fringe from the lush 
sub-Saharan region. It takes in parts of Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Burkina 
Faso, Chad and Niger in West Africa.

In some parts of the region, 70 percent of people rely on tilling the dusty, 
orange dirt for their survival, every year experiencing a boom and bust cycle 
of plenty in the months after the rainy season, followed by dwindling food 
stocks in the months before the next rains start, usually in June or July.

It is not unusual for Sahelian villagers to turn to fervent prayer in the weeks 
running up to the rainy season because they are so desperate for good rains. 
When rains do not come, whole villages and regions can fall deserted as people 
migrate to urban areas to escape death.

The FEWS report said that pasture conditions in the Sahel have been "excellent" 
in 2007, which has helped improve the value and condition of livestock. It also 
said cereal prices have been consistently lower this year than in each of the 
previous five years, indicating an expectation of good harvests among traders.

The most worrying pockets of low rainfall and poor crop yields are found in 
Niger and eastern and southern Chad, FEWS said.

Malnutrition stalking young lives

Agencies warn that the good harvests are not an indication that donor attention 
is no longer needed.

WFP warned on Monday that acute malnutrition continues to menace 1.4 million 
children under age five in the Sahel alone, where it said at least 37 percent 
of this group suffers physical and mental wasting because of poor diets.

West Africa is still the worst place in the world to be a child, according to 
the UN children's agency (UNICEF), which says nutritional standards are getting 
worse, not better, in many parts of the region.

Niger in 2005 had its best harvest since official records began, yet WFP said 
on Monday that 300,000 Nigerien children had to be treated for malnutrition at 
over 900 feeding centres. Another 300,000 children received food handouts. 
Physical and mental wasting because of poor nutrition was found in 11.8 percent 
of Nigerien children.

There are also major feeding operations in Mali, Mauritania and Burkina Faso, 
all of which have acute malnutrition rates between 11 and 12 percent.

"Malnutrition does not simply disappear with the arrival of the new harvest and 
return the next lean season. WFP and our partners are fighting a battle that 
cannot be won over a few weeks or months. It will take years, and require the 
sustained support of the international community," Jean-Jacques Graisse, WFP 
senior deputy executive director, said in Dakar.

"There is no vaccine against malnutrition - what we need is a commitment to 
rolling it back once and for all. It will take time, but we must do it. 
Malnutrition means that generation after generation is currently seeing their 
human potential compromised," he said.

Critical response

According to the aid NGO Oxfam (UK), the average number of food emergencies in 
Africa has nearly tripled since the mid-1980s, but responses have become 
increasingly blunt nosed.

While spending on food and humanitarian aid has increased, aid for agricultural 
production within sub-Saharan Africa dropped by 43 percent between 1990-92 and 
2000-02, the charity said in a report in July this year.

Although malnutrition is related to food intake, aid agencies and NGOs say 
disease, the availability of water and sanitation facilities and childcare 
practices all play major parts in stunting development.

Oxfam has criticised the international community's approach to hunger, saying 
that poverty, not hunger, is the main cause of food emergencies, and that food 
aid should "not be viewed as the inevitable default response to food 
insecurity".

WFP's Graisse agreed that the focus of donor funds on hunger relief comes at 
the expense of development and poverty-oriented projects. 

"The amount of money we receive today is basically aimed at nutritional 
programmes for children, much more than for programmes which would enable us to 
contribute to agricultural development," he said. "At the moment our resources 
enable us to focus only on the most immediately vulnerable groups."

Mali, Mauritania and Burkina Faso are all countries identified as chronically 
under-funded by the UN's humanitarian coordination agency (OCHA).

nr/cs
[ENDS]


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