KEY DEVELOPMENTS
· Following Niger’s food insecurity and acute malnutrition crisis of 2009/2010, food security in Niger generally improved in FY 2011 due to favorable rainfall and harvest patterns and increased grain price stabilization. The 2010 harvest produced an estimated 5.5 million metric tons (MT) of grain, approximately 40 percent above the five-year average. An evaluation of food security conditions conducted by Niger’s national early warning system in May and June 2011 found that approximately 2.3 million people in Niger were food-insecure, a 63 percent decrease from the same period in 2010. In addition, the quantity of food consumed in Niger remains at normal levels, despite an increase in demand due to the return of migrants from Libya, as a result of targeted food distributions to vulnerable households, according to the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET).
· Despite improved food security conditions in many areas, extreme weather events, including drought and floods, continue to negatively impact agricultural activities in many parts of Niger, as the majority of the predominantly agro-pastoral population relies on a single rainy season for crop cultivation and pasture renewal. Flooding in mid-August, for instance, affected nearly 14,000 people in Tillabéri and Maradi regions, destroying more than 100,000 hectares of crops and 1,000 houses, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
· Due to improved food security and ongoing acute malnutrition relief interventions, the national prevalence of global acute malnutrition (GAM) among children under five years of age decreased to 12.3 percent as of July 2011, a decline from the prevalence of 16.7 percent in November 2010. However, GAM levels remained near the U.N. World Health Organization (WHO) emergency threshold of 15 percent in five of Niger’s eight regions as of June 2011.
· In FY 2011, USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (USAID/OFDA) provided nearly $13.7 million in humanitarian assistance to benefit affected communities in Niger through agriculture and food security, economic recovery and livelihoods, and nutrition programs.
· USAID’s Office of Food for Peace (USAID/FFP) provided nearly $50.7 million for food assistance and economic recovery and livelihoods support. In total, USAID provided more than $64.3 million in emergency assistance for Nigeriens affected by food insecurity, acute malnutrition, and impaired livelihoods in FY 2011.