On November 20, 2018, World Children’s Day, the United Nations said hunger among children in West Africa’s Sahel had climbed to its highest level in a decade, driven by poor rains, conflict and high food prices.
UNICEF said more than 1.3 million children under five suffered from severe malnutrition in 2018 across Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal. The figure marked a 50 percent rise from 2017.
Marie-Pierre Poirier, UNICEF regional director for West and Central Africa, said in a statement: “When children suffer from severe acute malnutrition, they are more vulnerable to illnesses such as malaria and waterborne diseases.”
The agency said hunger remains a recurring problem in the region, where poverty and periodic drought continue to strain families. It said the situation was especially severe in the six countries named above.
The U.N. food agency, FAO, estimated that 6 million people did not have enough to eat during the lean season. Coumba Sow, FAO’s regional coordinator for resilience, said pastoralist communities were among the worst affected because poor rains left too little vegetation for grazing.
The Sahel has only one growing season, so when climate shocks or conflict damage harvests, households must survive until the next season. Sow said global warming is making rainfall more erratic, and added that the rains were late and then broke for a prolonged period, causing many farmers to lose half their seeds.
U.N. agencies and local governments were assessing production levels for the new season. Sow told the Thomson Reuters Foundation: “We still hope that we will be able to get some good results in harvest, but it is too early to say.”
