The outlook for West Africa’s hunger crisis in 2013 has improved in some parts of the region compared to 2012 when 18 million people were at risk of hunger.
But 2013 started with a warning from a UN official that more than 10 million people across the region are still at risk of starvation, including 1.4 million children facing severe acute malnutrition.
Experts say food crises like those in 2005, 2010 and 2012 indicate an underlying trend for increasing chronic vulnerability.
So why are so many people in the region frequently locked in a hunger crisis?
Failed harvests
Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Niger are among the poorest countries in the world, where most of the population rely on the land to make a living and to put food on the table.
So when inadequate rains at the end of 2011 led to poor harvests in many staple crops, such as millet, it was bad news for millions. Livestock too took a significant hit and pastoralists suffered as well.
Even in normal harvest years, people’s ability to feed themselves is tested by the ‘hunger gap’ - a period of months between when food from the previous growing season is exhausted and when new crops are ready for harvesting.
For example, in Chad even in good harvest years one third of the 11 million population is chronically undernourished.
Every year a staggering 300,000 children die from hunger in the Sahel region of West Africa. But during the 2012 crisis, the number of children at risk rose to more than a million.
Changing climate
It’s predicted that the impact of climate change on weather patterns will increase, resulting in more crop failures, scarcity and high food prices.
Crop yields from agriculture are likely to fall dramatically because of climate change – by up to half by 2020 in some African countries.
West Africa frequently suffers climatic shocks, such as droughts and floods, and you only have to go back to 2010 and 2005 to see the impact.
A key part of Tearfund’s work in the region is to help people cope with this changing climate, assisting them to grow drought resistant crops, introducing vegetable market gardening and improving access to water.
Every time these shocks occur, families’ livelihoods take a hit and the cumulative effect is that after each shock it takes them longer to recover.
To survive, household assets, such as animals, often have to be sold to get cash to buy food which then means people have little to fall back on.
High food prices
Those that have money to buy food are finding that their purchasing power is drastically diminished as shortages push up the cost of everyday staples, rising by 60 per cent in some cases.
Poorer households spend 60-80 per cent of their income on food. When prices rise they have little financial margin to absorb the difference.
Last July, the price of key crops on the global market, such as maize and soya beans, reached record all-time highs.
Conflict
The uprising in Libya, insecurity in Nigeria and the conflict in Mali have all contributed to the human misery in the region.
Mali has seen 227,000 people being displaced internally and more than 140,000 others fleeing to neighbouring countries such as Niger, Burkina Faso and Mauritania.
The UN says 4.3 million people in Mali need humanitarian aid.
Chronic poverty
The plight of the peoples of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Niger also needs to be seen in the context of chronic poverty. All four are in the bottom 12 countries in the UN’s Human Development Index.
One illustration of the impact of poverty is that it deprives many people of access to basic healthcare, which contributes substantially to malnutrition among children under five and pregnant and breastfeeding women.
Up to 20 per cent of the expected one million children who are severely malnourished are likely to develop serious medical complications such as diarrhoea and pneumonia.
Outlook
So what’s the outlook? In 2011, a report called Escaping the Hunger Cycle asserted: ‘Food crises can no longer be treated as limited events, caused by occasional hazards like droughts or floods. Food and nutrition insecurity have become long-term, chronic problems.
‘The growing level of poverty and inequality in the Sahel mean that there is no buffer when things go wrong. It only takes a small shock to send the system into disequilibrium.’
The report advocated the need for greater investment in building up the long term resilience of hunger-prone communities.