West African countries faced with food insecurity include Senegal, Gambia, Niger, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso as well as the northern tips of Nigeria and Cameroon
WODOBERE, Senegal (AlertNet) – Communities in West Africa’s drought-ridden Sahel region need urgent help to avert a hunger crisis of the scale that hit East Africa last year, Senegalese singer and humanitarian advocate Baaba Maal has warned.
The United Nations estimates that more than 15 million people are facing food insecurity in over a dozen West African countries in the Sahel, because of a mixture of drought, failed crops, insect infestations, high food prices and conflict in the region.
Countries faced with food insecurity include Senegal, Gambia, Niger, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso as well as the northern tips of Nigeria and Cameroon.
Baaba Maal, an ambassador for international charity Oxfam, visited villages hit by food shortages in northeast Senegal. He held two concerts in a village last week to raise awareness of hunger in the region.
“If we do not come to the people’s help the same situation that occurred in the Horn of Africa will also occur here in the Senegal,” Maal said at a concert in the village of Wodobere, about 800 km (nearly 500 miles) from Senegal’s capital, Dakar.
He emphasised the need for international aid and called on the Senegalese government to come up with a quick response plan to the unfolding hunger situation.
The proceeds from the concert attended by about 1,000 people will be used to help locals with schemes to tackle the food crisis.
The artist met village elders in localities where drought had dried up water sources for people and livestock – where the earth is parched and communities and their animals are tired, hungry and thirsty.
“The situation is more difficult than we thought,” said Patrick Ezeala, a spokesman for Oxfam-America, who accompanied the singer during his visit.
Ezeala said providing assistance to communities in the current food crisis in Senegal and in the rest of the Sahel is important, but long-term development aid will be needed to reduce people’s vulnerability, and to increase their resilience to recurrent crises.
The semi-arid Sahel region that runs south of the Sahara desert regularly faces droughts and food shortages, with recent crises occurring in 2004-2005 and 2009-2010.
But Maal insisted that villagers should not accept the recurrence of this phenomenon as a curse that cannot be tackled, saying governments should develop irrigation schemes and implement long-terms activities to develop resilience.
“It is not normal that that we should have a river like the River Senegal and so much land and think that what is happening is fate and we cannot help it,” Maal told reporters.
The River Senegal runs through most of the region visited by Maal but little irrigation is done in the area.
“The same situation occurs in Mali and Niger where one of Africa’s biggest rivers, the Niger, flows but very little is done to harness it to improve agriculture,” Maal told reporters.
“It is time we took our lives in our hands and show that Africa has come of age,” Maal said.
(Editing by Rebekah Curtis)
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