Longer-term solutions vital for African hunger crisis, says UN development chief

Still more resources are needed to resolve the immediate problem of feeding the hungry in the famine-hit Sahelian region of Africa, and longer-term solutions are essential to ensure food security, the head of the United Nations development agency has said after a trip though rural Niger, epicentre of one of the crises hitting the continent.

“The feeding camps are very important and clearly they have relieved the crisis and have made the crisis more manageable,” UN Development Programme (UNDP) Administrator Kemal Dervis declared yesterday.

“But our work now has to focus on the complex mechanisms that need to be put in place to really ensure food security, reduce infant mortality, and increase maternal health. We have to take a very comprehensive approach,” he added.

“There needs to be an increase of resources allocated to the Sahelian region,” he said after meeting with Prime Minister Hama Amadou in Niamey, Niger's capital, but “a longer-term commitment is needed for the region, not just in response to crisis.”

On Wednesday Mr. Dervis, on his first visit to Africa as UNDP Administrator, visited Zinder to tour rural food distribution centres run by the non-governmental organization (NGO) Médecins Sans Frontières and to inaugurate a UNDP-supported day-care centre created to prevent malnutrition by providing food and medical treatment to children under five and advising mothers on nutrition and health.

Niger, like other West African countries, faces a serious food crisis due to a 2004 drought and an invasion by hordes of locusts. In March and April some 3.6 million people were affected, the largest group being infants and pregnant mothers.

The situation has since improved but mortality rates among infants in the epicentre of the crisis are 4.1 deaths per 10,000 people per day. About 1,000 severely malnourished children are admitted every week to treatment.