Nuts and bolts in UN's war on hunger in Niger: education centres, cereal banks

From education programmes on the importance of breastfeeding to cereal banks, the United Nations is looking to longer-term solutions on the front line of the war against hunger in Niger as it grapples with both the immediate food crisis and the groundwork for preventing a recurrence.

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) is not only supporting deliveries of emergency food and medical supplies but running education programmes to teach the importance of exclusive breastfeeding of children up to the age of six months.

Such feeding avoids potential contamination from water-mixed formulas, also transfers to the infant the mother's immunity to many diseases, and is still not widely practised in Niger, where drought and the worst invasion of crop-devouring locusts have compounded an already fragile food situation, threatening up to 3.5 million people, more than a third of the total population.

The agency is also supporting general community education about nutrition. The goal is to enable "the awareness, identification, prevention and eventual treatment of malnutrition by the community themselves," says UNICEF Programme Officer Enrico Leonardi.

UNICEF, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) are setting up cereal banks in many villages throughout the country. The grain is stored in small warehouses, not just to feed families during the current crisis, but also to provide the beginnings of a longer-term solution.

Cereal banks are run by the villagers themselves. They sell off the cereal, often at less than the market price, in the months before the harvest, when food is scarce and prices are high. The money is then spent on restocking the bank at harvest time when the cereal is cheaper.

"Every year in Niger there's a four-month period when there's not enough to eat," says Arsene Azandossessi, Chief of UNICEF's office in Maradi. But a properly managed cereal bank will enable a community to deal with a food shortage. "When we set up a cereal bank, it is to make the village self-supporting."