[afro-nets] In Niger, Hunger Hits Crisis Level

[Peter Burgess <Profitinafrica@aol.com>]

Re: In Niger, Hunger Hits Crisis Level - by Robin Dixon, The Los
Angeles Times
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Dear Colleagues

The news stories about Niger are very disturbing. Not the pic-
tures of dying people, but what we learn about the underlying
dysfunctionality of the international official relief and devel-
opment assistance (ORDA) community. But this dimension of the
crisis is missing from the analysis and the news reports.

I did some economic analysis in Niger a few years ago and was
shocked at what I learned about the history of the uranium min-
ing industry in Niger. The industry was established (not sur-
prisingly) with the French when it was expected that uranium
would be in global short supply. When the world market prices
for uranium crashed in the early 1980s, Niger was left with a
huge industrial sector that was losing money catastrophically.
This might not matter in France or the USA. But it mattered in
Niger and in my view is the underlying reason why Niger as a na-
tion is in such poor financial condition.

For all of history people have lived in the Sahel. The pastoral
life is not easy. But it has worked for a long time... until re-
cent times when inter clan violence has taken on a modern dimen-
sion and that has helped destablize the system and made it more
fragile.

I learned something else. The food crisis assistance process is
disastrous for poor hungry subsistence farming communities. In
the first hungry season they get by and nobody pays much atten-
tion. Maybe the same for the second. But the third is crisis and
there are international images of starvation... at which point
the assistance community wakes up and starts to move food...
three months or more later, just when the next harvest, and per-
haps the first good harvest in several years arrives... so does
the food assistance. Now the poor are wiped out in the market
place economically... it is impossibly tough for poor farmers to
compete against free food that now gluts their market place.

In the case of Niger the ORDA community could not mobilize
around $20 million... in modern global economics this is truly
"petty cash"... this is million not billion as in the Iraq ex-
penditures... or US hurricane relief... or trillion as in capi-
tal market daily transactions. What on earth is going on in the
ORDA world... everyone seems to have known... nobody seems to
have lifted a finger.

There should be, in my view, some accountability for this terri-
ble failure of the ORDA community. And there should be some
FIXING of the problem.

I know that there are substantial funds being expensed in con-
nection with famine early warning, as for example the FEWS pro-
ject. They issue warnings... but what systems are in place to
respond to the warnings. From the example of Niger, it seems
nothing very much.

This is an appalling performance.

Sincerely

Peter Burgess
Tr-Ac-Net in New York
Tel.: +1-212-772-6918
mailto:peterbnyc@gmail.com
The Transparency and Accountability Network
With Kris Dev in Chennai India
and others in South Asia, Africa and Latin America
http://tr-ac-net.blogspot.com