Estimate food security conditions, 3rd Quarter 2008 (July-September)
Green: Generally Food Secure
Yellow: Moderately Food Insecure
Orange Highly Food Insecure
Red: Extremely Food Insecure
Black: Famine
Gray: No Data
Current projections show that up to 700,000 Nigeriens (about 5 percent of Niger's 14 million people) will need food aid ver the coming year because of poor harvests in some geographic areas. Nevertheless, this is a huge improvement over last year when 2.9 million people were estimated to be in need of food aid. The food situation is deteriorating in northern departments affected by armed conflict. Food securityconditions are poor across Ouallam, Téra, Dakoro, Keita,Tahoua, Abalak, Mayahi, Tanout, Gouré, Dogon Doutchi,Loga, Nguigmi and Mainé Soroa departments due to dwindling reserves and an erosion in purchasing power.The food situation in Tillabery, Say,
Filingué and Konni departments is improving and the stateof nutrition is stable in the southern part of the country.
On the whole, the food situation in Niger is better than previous years. The conditions in certain departments (e.g., Tillabery, Say and Kollo) actually improving and has a good harvests of irrigated rice crops. Similar improvements have occurred in departments like Filingué where intensive off‐season potato and vegetable farming has increased food availability.Sentinel site data from high‐risk areas of the country, and collected by the WFP, FAO, FEWS NET, CILSS, UNICEF, SIMA and other organizations, showed 70.12 percent of households classified as food‐secure in December 2007.
FAMINE:
A famine is a widespread shortage of food, an extreme scarcity of food, and is usually accompanied by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Famines in modern time are typically linked to overpopulation, as the number of humans exceeds regional carrying capacity and the failure of a harvest or the change in conditions, such as drought, can create a situation whereby large numbers of people live where the carrying capacity of the land has dropped radically. Famine is a failure of the poor to command sufficient resources to acquire essential food.
Extreme poverty, marginal livelihoods, and other chronic issues lie at the heart of the crisis which affected Niger and other Sahelian countries in 2005, with inadequate rainfall, and locust infestation the previous year, adding to the problem in some areas.
Niger is one of the poorest countries in the world, ranking near last on the United Nations Development Fund index of human development. It is a landlocked, Sub-Saharan nation, whose economy centers on subsistence crops, livestock, and some of the world's largest uranium deposits. Drought cycles, desertification, and a 2.9% population growth rate, have undercut the economy.
In recent years GDP growth has been highly volatile and very low on average. In 2004, it was estimated at 0.9% following the locust plague and drought. In 2005 the population faced a severe food crisis.
What aid is currently being received?
DFID Development Programme
DFID assistance to Niger focuses on three main areas – girls’ education, humanitarian assistance and debt relief:
Girls education
DFID funding will be channelled through the French Development Agency to Niger in support of the Government of Niger’s education sector plan.
DFID will provide £7 million over the next three years with the possibility of further support later.
Humanitarian Assistance
will receive a multi-annual budget of £500,000 per year for the next three years to tackle longer-term nutritional vulnerabilities. DFID will continue to monitor the humanitarian situation closely in these countries, where current emergency needs and the risk of deterioration are judged to be more manageable, but where chronic nutritional vulnerabilities pose similar threats to the poorest through the hungry season. The funding will be provided through the UN and NGOs who are working on continuing relief operations in the country.
in partnership with six other international and national NGOs, the DFID funded package announced today will include:
- Improvement of early warning systems to identify factors that limit communities' access to food;
- Strengthening of livelihoods and helping communities adapt to climate change through distribution of improved seed varieties, restocking of livestock and improved access to water and veterinary healthcare;
- Training to prepare for and reduce the effects of disasters on vulnerable communities for example by establishing fodder and cereal banks;
- Diversification of livelihoods through promotion of off-season vegetable farming, facilitating small businesses and provision of small loans;
- Provision of ‘safety nets’ in the form of seasonal cash for work, food for work and cash transfers schemes; and
- Monitoring the impact of these activities on vulnerable groups with a view to influencing national and international disaster prevention policies.
CARE In Niger we:
- improve agriculture, for example teaching farmers new farming techniques
- fight HIV and AIDS
- improve health care
CARE in action:
Women's savings and loans
Our ground-breaking Mata Masu Dubara project (MMD, means, ‘ingenious women') trains women to save and pool their money in groups so they can use it as a buffer against hard times.
Many also take out loans to start small businesses, such as buying seeds to plant crops to eat and to sell, so they can work their way out of poverty.
Earning a decent living
Today, as most Nigeriens are subsistence farmers struggling against a harsh climate, we focus on helping vulnerable people develop skills to survive the increasing threat of drought. We help farmers find other means of income such as gardening vegetables so they do not have to rely on selling crops of millet and sorghum which hardly ever provides a viable income.
We also help to make the arid land more productive by planting trees and laying rock lines to trap water.
CARE International has run more than 50 projects in Niger over the last 30 years and has a long history of helping the people of this country make their lives more secure.
ARE International’s programmes focus on livelihood security, strengthening civil society organization, governance, gender, health, HIV/AIDS and micro-finance. CARE Niger has solid experience in conflict resolution and community mobilization around water, food security and natural resources management.
CARE International’s vision in Niger is to create a new spirit of development, working in partnership with families and communities. CARE International is currently conducting 15 projects in all seven regions (Tillaberi, Dosso, Tahoua, Agadez, Maradi, Diffa and Zinder) of the country and focuses on protecting households’ assets to increase their capacities to face shocks and food insecurity. There is also a focus on gender and diversity, developing partnerships with other groups, such as community business organisations and charities, and preparing to respond to emergencies.
AIDS Prevention - Phase III (Prévention du SIDA)
The project goal is to reduce the contribution of migration to the spread of HIV infection. Due to seasonal patterns of migration from rural areas to urban centers, often on the West African coast, migrants are among the most vulnerable to infection and are often the main means of transmission in Niger. CARE has been involved with combating the spread of AIDS in Niger since 1993, and this project builds on work that CARE did in the AIDS and Migration project/SIDA en Exode which provided information about AIDS and made progress in changing attitudes that contribute to transmitting HIV. This project targets communities situated along the main migratory route between Tahoua (the area that provide the largest number of Niger’s migrants) and Abidjan (their main destination). CARE works with high-risk groups, including the wives of migrants who remain in their home villages, commercial sex workers and the predominantly young male migrants. Key activities include education and information services, greater access to condoms, enhanced capacity to diagnose and treat sexually transmitted infections, and social support for high-risk groups.
Basic and Girls’ Education
Children of the Desert – Linking Education and Democracy Project
This project emerged after communities shared their thoughts with each other during CARE’s 1997 household livelihood security assessment in Maradi. The communities identified five major problems, namely:
1) schools are nearly nonexistant in the rural areas;
2 )access to education is a significant problem for girls;
3) the curriculum is inadequate;
4) language is an inhibiting factor to learning; and
5) lack of government and donor funds. CARE’s Children of the Desert – Linking Education and Democracy Project aims to improve household livelihood security in Maradi, especially in the districts of Madarounfa, Guidan Roumdji and Dakoro, by improving access to quality education.
The project includes building basic life skills, reading, writing, arithmetic, grammar and language skills among 1,800 children through 12 community-managed primary schools serving 20 communities. This in turn develops the people's ability to speak for themselves. The project is participatory and demand-driven. Efforts to identify local needs rely upon direct contacts with participants, who are involved in all phases of project planning, problem identification, project design and evaluation. A participatory needs assessments in target communities helped in developing a direct relationship with project participants, and increased CARE’s knowledge and local partners’ about conditions and development needs. The project uses child-centered teaching methods and focuses on improving school management. Furthermore, this project tests a four-year curriculum cycle for children who dropped out of school (9 to 14 years) so that after the completion of this cycle, students can integrate into normal secondary school or a technical school.
Agriculture and Natural Resources
Diffa Pastoral Household Livelihood
Diffa region, eastern Niger is essentially a pastoral zone, characterized in recent times by a localized civil war and conflict between ethnic groups over water and pasture resources. The project goal is to improve livelihood security for 500 pastoral households and communities by improving management techniques to address annual variations in pastureland and inter-communal peace processes. The project includes:
1) developing the capability of households to manage fluctuations in natural resources, using a gender-sensitive approach and helping to rehabilitate the household economies (especially those of the women);
2) promoting strategies for managing
natural resources (in particular water and pasture) for families and communities, and between communities of users (temporary and permanent), in particular in situations of pasture deficit or drought;
3) and reinforcing the capacities of civil society by partnering with key groups to increase their ability to combat pastoral poverty and maintain civil order.
Women and Equality
Mata Masu Dubara (MMD) in Zinder and Diffa
CARE’s Mata Masu Dubara in Zinder and Diffa Project’s goal is to improve the socioeconomic conditions of 50 000 poor rural women and their ability to secure a better livelihood for themselves and their families by offering them access to a permanent system of savings and credit. The project does not provide financial support, but rather, offers training for groups of women interested in the creation and operation of these savings and credit associations. It also develops women's capabilities to participate in decision-making at the community and local levels through an integrated training on rights, decentralization, instructional strengthening, Community Based Organisation registration and partnership. The project also develops women's capacity to network to help them to improve their livelihood and play a role in civil society.
Experimentation Linkage to Tahous
Access to credit for developing income-generating activities is extremely limited for women in Niger. The MMD groups (credit and savings groups in CARE’s program) are currently able to deliver loans to women for amounts varying between $1 and $30 (around 60p to £18). More and more women are seeking larger loans in order to mount more viable, sustainable income-generating activities. CARE Niger is encouraging these women’s groups to establish working relationships with local financial structures, including credit unions and banks, in order to access larger amounts of credit. The project itself will provide information on possible structures to approach, including procedures for accessing credit. CARE will facilitate direct partnerships between the MMD groups and these organizations.
Rural livelihoods Development
Food Security and Nutrition Program in Niger (FSIN) (Initiative pour la sécurité alimentaire et nutritionnelle)
A consortium led by Africare, in collaboration with CARE, Catholic Relief Services and Helen Keller International, implements this project. It aims to improve the quality of life of rural households in five particularly food insecure regions. The program uses targeted health, nutrition and food security interventions, and develops local capacity (communities and community early warning systems) to provide and sustain these services. CARE is responsible for implementing a livelihood security and nutrition program to address food security and health problems in Zinder and Tahoua. FSIN builds roads and health infrastructure through food for work operations. The development of other community infrastructure, including the rehabilitation of ponds and the development of community health centers is also addressed under this program. Finally, the program aims to develop community social capital, including the reinforcement of local safety net arrangements and social solidarity linkages that help mitigate conflict and sustain positive health behaviors and livelihood security.
overnance and Civil Society Strengthening
Maradi Youth
CARE’s Maradi Youth project aims to develop a network of youth with suitable skills to ensure a viable civil society in urban Maradi. Specifically, the project strives:
a) to increase the knowledge of 120 boys and girls in Maradi in human rights, civic participation in a democratic context and HIV/AIDS;
b) to develop a role for the youth in volunteer community awareness-raising activities;
c) to provide opportunities to the youth of Maradi to develop skills that make them employable.
The Maradi Youth Project uses a people-oriented strategy that facilitates a process whereby the rights and dignity of youth are recognized. The project works with a local NGO, Association Nigérienne pour le Bien Etre Familial, to establish a series of out-of-school educational and community activities for the youth of urban Maradi. ANBEF is responsible for project implementation and CARE’s role is to support the NGO with technical advice and methodological support during the process. CARE works at transferring sufficient and effective skills to ANBEF in terms of planning, budgeting, monitoring and evaluation. It is expected that the support from CARE will be progressively reduced to allow ANBEF to become fully responsible for replication and scale-up.
Capacity Development and Good Governance of Natural Resources in southern Maradi (RECAL in French)
RECAL builds on CARE’s Baban Raffi Community Development Project implemented in the rural area of Madarounfa and Guidan Roumji in southern Maradi. The project targets 25,000 men and women from 4,200 households living in the 50 communities and aims to ensure that these communities are able to strengthen and consolidate their organisational, technical and institutional capacities. At the same time, the project strives to actively involve these communities in the decentralisation process and in the local management of the natural resources in partnership with local NGOs. The project has two immediate objectives:
1) to strengthen community based
organizations’ (CBO) capacity to initiate/develop and execute local development plans in partnership with NGOs;
2) to support NGOs, associations and COFOs (Commisions foncières in French translated as Land tenure commission) in their efforts towards strengthening the local communities’ capacities for sustainable management of the natural resources and the prevention and resolution of conflicts. The lessons learned from this component helps to plan future activities in Agricultural and Natural Resources sector, civil society strengthening, advocacy, decentralisation
and conflict resolution.
Training for Women’s groups in Niger
CARE’s Training for Women’s groups project works in Dosso, Tahoua and Tillaberi districts with the aim to develop the livestock sector by strengthening women livestock producers’ access to credit and training in animal husbandry and transformation and marketing techniques for animal products. The project targets 600 women’s groups or about 12,000 women. Expected results of the project include:
1) strengthened technical and organizational capacities of women’s groups;
2) increased revenues earned from livestock production;
3) improved household food security;
4) improved social capital from social exchanges;
5) increased contact and establishment of production and
business networks;
6) an adapted saving and credit system;
7) women’s enhanced ability to amass and retain capital;
8) strengthened technical and managerial capacities of associations and public institutions; and
9) reduction of conflicts related to access to natural resources. All of these results are expected at household, groups/local institutions, community, inter-community, communal and national levels.
In addition, the project strives to strengthen the capacity of its partners, Association pour la Redynamisation de l’Elevage au Niger (AREN) and Eleveurs Sans Frontières (ESF Dangol). CARE, AREN, and ESF Dangol work in consultation with the technical services of the Ministry of Animal Resources (MRA) and the Ministry of Social Development (MSD), both of whom already support producers in the livestock sector. This partnership approach and capacity strengthening strategy for partners enable the project to achieve its objective of contributing to the reduction of poverty of the targeted beneficiaries.
Wfp
The first objective of the rotracted Relief and Rehabilitation Operation (PRRO) addresses the most critical aspect of underdevelopment in Niger, child malnutrition. Through the PRRO, WFP provides supplementary feeding rations for moderately malnourished children and ‘blanket’ supplementary feeding, in collaboration with UNICEF, to all children from 0-3 years old in the most vulnerable areas of the country to cover the most critical moments of the lean season.
WFP is also working with nutritional partners to support to malnourished pregnant and lactating women. In addition to nutrition activities, the PRRO includes food for training aimed at improving the self-help capacities and development planning of village communities and village cereal banks planned to help reduce the risk of excessive price fluctuations in regions with poor access to the private markets.
On average the CP targets about 400,000 beneficiaries per year with 14,00 metric tonnes of food aid. In order to improve the Government’s capacity to monitor food security, WFP together with other partners provide technical support to the National Early Warning System of the Nation Food Security Mechanism. Activities include regular monitoring support of the food security situation, joint assessments and joint evaluation missions.
UNICEFPrimary education for 150,000 children (Total
project amount-$2,245,421 for 2008 – 2009)
WHO
T he first round of this year’s Immunization
Plus Days (NIPDs) held
in all the states of the country and
the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) from
January 31 – February 3, 2009. The
round provided an opportunity for the
respective Task Forces on Immunization
(TFIs) in the endemic states where they
have been inaugurated, to consolidate
their roles in efforts to ensure the interruption
of the transmission of the wild
