Key messages
The food and nutrition crisis in the Sahel continues. People are facing a triple crisis : limited access to food , erosion of resilience due to recurrent crises and weak social services, and region- wide ramifications of conflicts in the region.
As one of the largest providers of humanitarian assistance to the Sahel, the European Commission’s humanitarian aid and civil protection department (ECHO) is helping to ensure appropriate assistance for 1.7 million extremely food insecure people and 580 000 severely malnourished children in 2014. This represents respectively a quarter and half of all people targeted to receive assistance.
The food and nutrition prospects are unlikely to improve significantly in 2015. This past year has seen average harvests, high food prices as well as conflict and insecurity. There are particular concerns due to erratic rain fall in Senegal, Mauritania and Gambia and as a result of the expanding conflict in northern Nigeria.
Emergency needs in the Sahel will persist unless the root causes of food insecurity and malnutrition are addressed and the resilience of the poorest people is strengthened. The European Commission has been instrumental in the creation of AGIR , a global alliance to strengthen resilience in West Africa which has set itself a ‘zero hunger’ goal by 2032 .
The Ebola outbreak in the coastal states of West Africa requires preparedness and contingency plans on the part of the Sahel countries and ECHO’s humanitarian partners. People are very mobile in this part of the world, increasing the likelihood of the virus spreading further.
