Canada urged to act on West Africa
Immediate action is needed to prevent a large-scale famine in West Africa following the failure of life-giving seasonal rains, World Vision Canada president Dave Toycen said Sunday.
Reached by Postmedia News as he toured a village in rural Mali, Toycen said the situation is already becoming grim for local residents.
“It feels like we’re sliding into a crisis here,” he said. “It’s just the beginning of something that can really have a devastating impact.
“Twenty per cent of people here in Mali — about three million people — we think will be affected by this.
“We’re encouraging our government of Canada to be aggressive on this, and they’ve got a history of concern for food security,” he added. “We’re trying to avoid the ‘Horn of Crisis’ reality here in West Africa.”
The Canadian International Development Agency has not yet pledged any additional funds to the developing crisis. A spokesperson for Minister Bev Oda said that although the situation is “concerning,” no course of relief action has been decided.
“We’re monitoring the situation to determine the most effective response,” Justin Broekema said. “In the meantime, we call on everyone involved to ensure humanitarian access to the people in need.”
NDP foreign affairs critic Helen Laverdiere said the government should begin disbursing relief funds immediately.
“We need to act now and provide humanitarian sup- port,” she said. “These are countries that have very limited resources, and I think we should act in solidarity.”
A tardy response from the international community is partly to blame, she said, for the wide scale human suffering during the Horn of Africa’s drought last year. Speedy action is needed, she said, to head off a similar result for West Africa.
“A stitch in time saves nine,” Laverdiere said.
The famine situation is expected to impact the Sahelian countries of Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Mali, Senegal, Niger and Chad. The next rains, which will allow farmers to plant new crops, are not expected until April at the earliest.
The Sahel forms a
belt up to 1,000 kilometres wide, spanning Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. It is a buffer zone between the Sahara Desert and the savannah lands located along West Africa’s Atlantic coastline.
The Sahel has been one of the global regions hit hardest by climate change. Arable lands on the edge of the Sahel have been drying out and reverting to desert in recent years, reducing the region’s already weak agricultural base. Around 12 per cent of people in Mali, for example, are chronically malnourished even during non-famine circumstances.
With so many people already living on the edge, Toycen said, even the smallest disruption to farming can reduce families to destitution.
“Food prices here have gone up anywhere from 50 to 100 per cent, in some areas” Toycen said. “When families are already spending 50 to 80 per cent of their budget on food, you can imagine what a spike in the food price amounts to for them.”
Mamoutou Koita, a Malian employee of World Vision, said the recent twice-annual rains were too short to produce crops sufficient to feed the population. Local people understand exactly how dire this is, he said.
“Most of our food comes from the raining season,” he said. “So if it doesn’t rain, we know things will get bad.
“People are feeling hopeless because the situation is very bad, let me tell you,” Koita added. “Food is very … too expensive here.”
Locals have been rationing food for some time already — with most families surviving on one meal per day — and are focused on keep their children well fed, Toycen said
“If they’re fortunate, there might be enough left over so the children may get a second meal during the day,” he said.
Despite rationing efforts, he said, food theft had begun.
“People have been stealing chickens,” he said. “And yet they are quite forgiving, because their assumption was that if people are stealing chickens it’s because they’re desperately hungry.”