Too poor to live: poverty kills Niger's hungry

Too poor to live: poverty kills Niger's hungry 02 Jul 2005 10:39:09 GMT Source: Reuters

By Matthew Green

GUIDAN ROUMDJI, Niger, July 2 (Reuters) - Women cradling starving children at a clinic in Niger this week let slip their solemn expressions and burst into laughter.

The joke: the idea that they might be able to eat meat.

"It's hard enough for us to find millet," said Habiba Abdulsalam, 30, waiting like the other women for help for her hungry, diarrhoea-stricken baby. "We can only dream of eating meat," she said, darkly amused at the very idea.

Yet not far from the clinic in the village of Guidan Roumdji in southern Niger, a market stall stood laden with enough fresh cuts of goat to feed the dozens of hungry women and children -- only at prices far beyond their grasp.

The worst drought in years has left 3.6 million people short of food in the West African country, but it is not just one failed harvest that lies at the root of the crisis.

Already counted among the poorest of the world's poor, Niger's farmers simply cannot afford to buy what is still on offer. Their children are beginning to die for want of a few cents worth of food. Poverty is killing them.

As the Group of Eight industrialised countries meet in Scotland next week to discuss ways to help Africa, Niger's emaciated children provide a case study of rich world inaction.

Medical organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) criticised donors like the European Union this week for failing to heed government appeals for help nine months ago, saying their apathy had already cost lives.

Niger's government has provided some subsidised food at below market prices, but MSF says a major distribution of free food is needed immediately to avert mass starvation. In the country's south, there are few signs it will come in time.

NO MONEY

Niger's cash-strapped government says it simply does not have enough money, while the U.N. World Food Programme provides free food only as a last resort, saying handouts distort markets and can create dependency.

For some women, who often have eight children, there is faint hope of keeping all their infants alive.

"For the past few years, everything was fine," said Halima Dingue, 25. "Now it's awful, everybody is suffering."

As in many parts of Africa, poverty here forms a vicious circle. Drought denudes pastures, forcing families to sell cows, just as dwindling crop supplies raise the cost of food.

Their purchasing power reduced to zero, families begin to eat seeds they would normally save for the next planting. Both adults and children -- who learn to hoe virtually as soon as they can walk -- are too weak to tend the fields.

Inevitably, the next crop suffers: the poverty trap closes. Niger has won debt relief advocated by campaigners, but without more aid, it may never break the cycle.

Promising temporary relief, the first green tufts of the next millet harvest in September are poking through the soil, but the two months until they ripen will be the toughest yet.

Remaining food stocks will run out and rain will form puddles for mosquitoes to breed, nurturing deadly malaria.

"There's a few people who have food in our village, but most of us have nothing," said Sahoura Abdou, 24. "I don't know how people are going to find enough to eat."