LATEST SITUATION
19 million people remain affected by the food and nutrition crisis in West Africa’s Sahel region due to a combination of drought, poor accessibility to food, high grain prices, environmental degradation and displacement due to conflict. The effects of the drought continue to impact the following number of people per country:
Burkina Faso 2.8
Chad 3.6
Mali 4.9
Mauritania 700,000
Niger 6.4
Nigeria 100,000
Senegal 739,000
West Africa food security situation (with flooding shown):Even though crisis levels of food insecurity have stabilized and/or improved in certain areas of the Sahel, immediate humanitarian assistance is still needed.
The agro-pastoral zones between Mauritania and Chad as well as the zones in east-central Niger and Chad are seeing improvements and the region returning to a normal food security phase. However, the longer term affects of the drought will be felt for several years due to a lack of coping mechanisms, loss of harvests and the inability to recover from the affects of high food prices and environmental degradation due to climate change.
Most of the major flooding in the Sahel has subsided with the exception of Niger and Nigeria which are dealing with a second flood stage of the Niger River due to heavy Guinean rains from early December.