Sahel's worst hunger season, a perfect storm

Nearly 29 million people could be food insecure in West Africa between June and August, according to humanitarian organisations' forecasts, with the Sahel countries the worst affected.

This is known as the hunger season or famine period and occurs in places such as Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and northern Nigeria, when the reserves from the crops harvested the previous year run out at the end of the rainy season (May-September).

This is a period that, according to Paloma Martín de Miguel, geographic head for the Sahel at Action Against Hunger (ACH), told Efe, "can be brought forward or delayed" and that can be prevented and predicted with the alert systems that include different factors that affect food insecurity.

"This year, because of the rains, we might have thought that it was going to be a little more relaxed, but there are other variables that make this period of famine more difficult," points out Martín de Miguel.

For Juan Echanove, Director of Food and Water Systems at the NGO CARE International, the increase in conflicts and the covid-19 pandemic, together with climate change, mean that this period of famine is no longer "so cyclical" and has become "a kind of perfect storm".

The increase in violence due to the spread of jihadism, inter-community conflicts and banditry has caused around 5.6 million people to be internally displaced in the Sahel countries and more than 800,000 to take refuge in neighbouring nations.

"There is a succession of conflicts that, if you put them on the map, in the end cover almost the entire region," Echanove told Efe.

"We are talking about an area where the worsening of the crisis is more complex and faster than anywhere else in the world," Martín de Miguel points out.

The head of ACH affirms that, with population growth in the Sahel (3.9 % annually) and the decrease in stable areas due to insecurity, there are more people in stable areas, which means that natural resources are not sufficient.

"All these crises mean that thousands of people do not have access to their fields, do not cultivate crops and are forced to move to safe areas where the number of people is increasing," causing "food tension," Issiaka Abdou, regional programme manager for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), told Efe.

In addition, the amalgamation of armed groups in the Sahel makes it difficult to negotiate humanitarian corridors and organisations are increasingly becoming victims of attacks, which generates a problem for the distribution of food and aid.

According to Abdou, the difficult access to water in the Sahel makes "agriculture in these countries 80%, if not more, dependent on the rainy season", with years when it hardly rains at all and others when rainfall is so abundant that floods destroy crops, making the lean season worse.

Lack of water in the Sahel also causes a struggle for land between herders and farmers, conflicts that are exacerbated as resources diminish and desertification and deforestation advance.

"Everything is related," says Echanove. There are conflicts because there is a shortage of water and there is a shortage of water due to climate change, and there is a lack of food due to the increase in the population, and there is an increase in the population because there is no social security to guarantee the elderly who is going to look after them, and in the end all of this has a name, which is poverty".

Furthermore, Abdou explains, the increase in expenses to cover family needs has meant that in the last twenty years the use of the harvest has changed and that, instead of being destined mainly for family consumption, now more than 80% is sold, quickly exhausting the food reserves.

On the other hand, the global economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has reduced incomes, increased food prices and reduced remittances, affecting food security in the Sahel.

Likewise, the fight against COVID-19 has undermined vaccination campaigns against other diseases, and fear of contagion has meant that many people do not go to health centres for other ailments, arriving weaker at this period of scarcity.

"Sometimes there is a feeling in public opinion that places like the Sahel have no solution, that this is the way it has always been, and this is not true," Echanove stresses.

In the end," he concludes, "what ends up happening is that this will be news when in August or September more generalised famines start to be reported, but it is now when we have to provide the means.