The Ténéré desert in northern Niger is fast encroaching on the salt pans in Bilma, a community that has been reliant on mining the mineral for centuries. Credit: Photomatt28/CC BY 2.0

By Ousseini Issa
BILMA, Niger, May 15 2013 (IPS)

The Bilma community has mined the salt pans in the massive Ténéré desert region in northern Niger for centuries. But the threat of the ever-encroaching desert has become a real concern as locals here struggle to cope with a decline in salt prices.

“If we don’t protect this site, salt mining will disappear under the sand,” Abdoulaye Soumana, Bilma’s departmental director for the environment, told IPS as he contemplated the vast sand dunes enclosing the Kalala salt pan, a mining site in Bilma.

The Ténéré is a region in the south-central Sahara desert consisting of a vast plain of sand that stretches from northeastern Niger into western Chad.

According to Soumana, an environmental technician, the desert stretches out across a bed of clay, containing hundreds of hectares of salt.

“Some salt pans are already submerged (by sand), but the local authorities haven’t quite understood the extent of the threat. They only care about the money generated from Bilma’s production,” he remarked.

According to Bilma’s mayor, Abba Marouma Elhadj Laouel, there are about 6,000 inhabitants here – all involved in salt mining. Many have mined the pits for years, digging into the earth to extract the salt.

Boulama Laouel, the chair of the Kalala salt miners cooperative, agreed. “Salt is the main livelihood for the people of Bilma. Even though it’s difficult to sell, every family has a salt pit that they mine,” he told IPS.

A 2011 study carried out by Soumana found that Bilma salt miners earn about 800 dollars a year, while their counterparts in the northern town of Siguidine bring in 1,842 dollars annually.

Fadji Boulama, a 35-year-old salt worker and mother of five, does not remember another way of life.

“Salt mining is an age-old activity here in Bilma. My grandparents were miners. My parents took over their trade and then passed the baton on to me. It’s our main livelihood,” she told IPS from the salt pit she mines.

“My husband migrated to Libya, so three of my children, ages nine, 12 and 14, help me when they are not in school. The sales from the salt cover my everyday household costs,” Boulama added.

Two types of salt are extracted from mines across the region – kitchen salt and salt for animal feed. Bilma produces 12,000 tonnes of kitchen salt and 20,700 tonnes of animal feed salt annually.

“Bilma’s animal salt contains a number of mineral nutrients crucial for the healthy growth of animals and the quality of their meat,” Oumarou Issaka, a veterinarian based in the country’s capital, Niamey, told IPS.

But locals have complained that they are unable to sell their salt at reasonable prices because of the lack of road infrastructure to and from this isolated northern region.

Yagana Arifa, who works on a salt pit next to Boulama, explained to IPS: “This work gives us enough to eat and meet some expenses, but without a road, it’s not easy to get a good price for our product.

“Our main clients are the caravan traders who currently pay 20 cents for a two-kilogramme block of salt and then sell it for a dollar in Agadez (the main town in the area to the north) or for more than 1.20 dollars in the south of the country.”

Salifou Laouel, the mayor of the Fachi rural municipality, which lies some 240 km west of Bilma, confirmed that producers from his area face similar problems.

“We are forced to sell at very low prices because of our isolated location. Ordinary trucks can’t cross the desert to carry our produce to more profitable markets in the south,” Laouel told IPS.

“Salt for animal feed is in highest demand. In Fachi, we produce about 450 tonnes a year, which earns us about 138,000 dollars,” he added.

Denise Brown, the resident representative of the United Nations World Food Programme, said the agency would support the salt miners by using their kitchen salt in its local school meal programmes.

“We are assessing how we can purchase a fixed quantity of their output to support marketing, so long as it meets iodine content requirements set by the World Health Organization,” she told IPS.

Residents of Clara Town, a low-income neighbourhood of Monrovia, Liberia, face sanitation challenges with the onset of the rainy season. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

By Ousseini Issa
NIAMEY , Apr 10 2013 (IPS)

About 20 communities in Tillabéri, west Niger, have been declared open defecation-free zones as across the country, very few people have access to proper sanitation.

The communities were part of a Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) project, launched in September 2010 in 32 villages in the region by the local office of the NGO Plan International.

Souley Hachimou, a sanitation technician in Niamey, the Niger capital, told IPS: “Open air defecation is a widespread hazard in Niger, especially in rural areas where people do not see the need for latrines, as they have the bush nearby to relieve themselves.”

But, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), more than 90 percent of the population in rural areas still practice open defecation.

Part of the reason could be Niger’s rapid population growth since 1990.

According to a study on sanitation in the five African countries of Niger, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Uganda and Rwanda, published on Feb. 20 by the international NGO WaterAid, “between 1990 and 2013, Niger’s population increased by 7.7 million people, but only one million people had access to sanitation during the same period.”

Salmou Yacouba, a 62-year-old resident of Saga-Gorou, a village close to Niamey, told IPS that this was because many in the rural areas were not used to toilets. “The construction of latrines, even traditional ones, requires money to buy cement and steel reinforcements for the slab, never mind the labour. We are not used to toilets – they are for towns where there are no open spaces for people to relieve themselves,” she said.

Boulkassoum Hamadou, an inhabitant of Tillabéri, told IPS that it was difficult to maintain the deep pits needed for latrines in rural areas.

“They have to be emptied once they are full, otherwise the stench around the village is intolerable. Everyone needs to help maintain latrines, which is difficult enough in a household, never mind a village.

“This is why people continue to defecate outside.”

But Marietou Boubacar, a 31-year-old small-scale farmer in Saga-Gorou, conceded that open defecation was unhealthy. “When you learn that contagious diseases, especially cholera, are caused by a lack of sanitation and hygiene, you start to adopt good practices, and you stop defecating in the open because health is precious,” she told IPS.

The WaterAid report pointed out that “out of 15.5 million Nigeriens, 14.1 million do not currently have access to proper toilets; only six percent use latrines, while 79 percent resort to open air defecation.” The report, titled, “Keeping promises: Why African Leaders Need Now to Deliver on Past Water and Sanitation Commitments” attributes this to the government’s failure to honour previous financial commitments in the sanitation sector.

In all five countries covered by the study, the current levels of access to sanitation compared to the targets set out in the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, eight development goals adopted by U.N. member states in 2000, leave much to be desired. The current overall level of access to sanitation in Niger is nine percent, though in rural areas it is only four percent.

Niger has also failed to meet the commitments of the African Union’s “eThekwini Declaration” signed in South Africa in 2008, where governments agreed to commit at least 0.5 percent of their GDP to sanitation.

According to the WaterAid report, 0.89 percent of GDP (39.4 million dollars) has been spent on water and sanitation combined between 2007 and 2010.

“There is no clear separation of budget items dedicated to water and sanitation to help make more accurate assessments of the efforts made by each government department, but investments are probably less in water and hygiene,” Hachimou said.

Soumaïla Hima, a health worker in Niamey, said that “a lack of access to sanitation and hygiene is the cause of the most recurrent diseases in our country, such as parasitic and diarrhoeal illnesses.”

“The cholera epidemic which spread across the whole country last year, causing several thousand infections, including 300 deaths, is mainly the result of this,” he told IPS.

The WaterAid report cites a World Bank calculation that “the lack of access to sanitation costs Niger the equivalent of 2.4 percent of its GDP, about 143.6 dollars per year (to treat diseases), which is two and a half times the annual amount spent on access to water and sanitation.”

In addition to the cost incurred for medical visits, hospitalisation and the purchase of medicines, Nigeriens also waste a huge amount of time looking for a place to relieve themselves — about 2.2 billion hours per year, Hamani Oumarou, the head of WaterAid in Niamey, told IPS.

Development partners are supporting the Niger government achieve its target to increase the number of people with access to sanitation from six percent in 2009 to 25 percent per year by 2015, according to the Nigerien Minister of Water and Environment.

Togota Sogoba, the head of water and sanitation at UNICEF in Niamey, told IPS that the organisation was also undertaking “projects along the lines of CLTS (Community Led Total Sanitation) in 225 villages, among which 140 have completely stopped open air defecation.”

A couple of burned cars and abandoned Malian tanks now remind visitors that violent fights occurred in Diabaly in central Mali. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Ousseini Issa
MANGAIZE, Niger , Mar 5 2013 (IPS)

Malian refugees in Mangaïze, northwest Niger, are keen to return home to start work and be able to support themselves once more.

“We do have food and water, even if the food is not varied. Our primary schoolchildren are back in class,” Aissa Hama, a 39-year-old mother of five, told IPS. “But it’s hard to be in exile, dependent on the help of others.”

She is one of thousands of Malians who spilled across the border into neighbouring countries in the months prior to and after the occupation of the country’s north by armed Islamist groups allied with Al-Qaeda back in April 2012. The Islamists held onto the country’s north until February, when a French intervention allowed the Malian army to reclaim the territory.

The Mangaïze camp was officially created in May 2012, following an influx of a large number of Malian families fleeing to Niger, said Idrissa Abou, a member of Niger’s National Commission for Refugees.

In addition to a monthly food ration, refugees have access to drinking water from three small boreholes, and primary health care. There are sanitation facilities with 250 showers and toilets respectively, and a household waste management system.

Refugees also have access to administrative services, a school and, with the opening of a police station, a security service.

“At the moment, there are 1,522 families, which amounts to a population of 6,037 mainly made up of Malian refugees, but there are also Nigerien returnees,” Abou told IPS, adding that an overwhelming majority of the refugees are from Ménaka, the closest Malian town to the Ouallam municipality in southwestern Niger.

He added that the numbers in the camp had increased in February after some 1,700 refugees from the nearby Bani Bangou camp were transferred to Mangaïze.

The transfer meant that Mangaïze camp had to be extended by 11 additional hectares from its original 52, according to Ibrahim Kebé, the local coordinator for Islamic Relief Worldwide and director of the camp.

“But with the continued support of the Niger government and the cooperation of other humanitarian agencies, we will be able to overcome the challenges,” he told IPS.

Access to enough food has been one of those challenges.

According to the latest statistics of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Niamey, the Niger capital, each refugee in Mangaïze receives on average of 1,849 kilocalories (kcal) per day, against the standard 2,100 kcal, and 10.8 litres of water, compared to the recommended 20.

For some, the rations have not been enough.

Aissata Yindou, a 36-year-old mother of four who has been living in the Mangaïze refugee camp since March 2012, told IPS that the food rations needed to be increased.

“We only get a 50-kg bag of rice for the family, and a 0.75-kg can of cooking oil per person. We don’t receive any spices to eat with this food. They have to increase the food ration,” she said.

She added that access to medication was also limited.

“This eye infection is so painful sometimes I can’t sleep. I can’t get it treated because the camp doesn’t have the medication and I don’t have the money to buy it,” said a distressed Yindou.

Hadiza Issaka Abdou, a nurse at the camp’s health centre, told IPS that they were doing their best to treat patients with what medication was available.

“We get many complaints, but we are doing the best we can in terms of on-site medical treatment. We don’t have medicines for every illness. The main diseases here are malaria, diarrhoea and skin diseases,” she said.

But Akiline Agbogoli, the vice president of the Malian Refugee Community at the camp, told IPS that they were being well treated.

“Being away from home, we can’t have everything we need, but in terms of food and basics, we have been well treated,” Agbogoli said.

However, for many here, it is not enough. Saddam Moussa worked as a butcher in Ménaka, in Gao Region, until the Azawad National Liberation Movement, the Malian Tuareg rebel group, captured the town.

“I am tired of doing nothing, waiting for others to take care of me. I want to work and live off the fruits of my labour,” he told IPS.

Mohammed Lamine Aghabass, an office worker at the Ménaka customs office, also wants to return home. “We welcome the military support from Mali’s allies to free our hometowns from the thugs who chased us away. We are in a hurry to get back to our normal lives, but we can’t go back without a go-ahead from the Niger government and the agencies that are helping us,” he told IPS.

According to the UNHCR, there were 53,135 refugees from Mali in Niger in January 2013.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been affected by heavy flooding along the Niger River over the last few weeks. Niger, Mali and Benin have been particularly hard hit, with dozens of deaths, tens of thousands of houses destroyed and vast areas of farmland submerged by rising waters.

In Niger alone, more than half a million people have been affected by floods. As of Sep. 12, 75 people had been killed, 37,000 homes submerged and crops destroyed in 150 of the country’s 366 communes, according to prime ministerial spokesman Oumarou Keïta, who also sits on Niger’s Inter-ministerial Committee for Prevention and Monitoring of Floods.

Flooding has been especially severe in Dosso, in the southwest, Tillabéri, in the west, and the capital, Niamey.

The scale of devastation in Niamey is such that Nigerien authorities have had to shelter displaced people in schools while preparing better sites for temporary housing.

“Since our house collapsed on Aug. 21, I’ve been living in this school with my husband and five children in very close quarters. There are three families sharing this single classroom with us,” said Fatouma Alzouma, 47, a resident of Saga, one of the Niamey neighbourhoods worst affected by the floods.

“We have had some assistance, but the food and other support they have given us is insufficient because people who haven’t lost their homes have fraudulently got their names onto the lists,” said Alzouma.

Koné Soungalo, a hydraulic modelling expert at the Niamey-based Niger Basin Authority, said the city is vulnerable to flooding because of the flat terrain.

Heavy rainfall throughout the two million square kilometre river basin has swollen the volume of water, he told IPS. Accelerated build-up of sand on the bed of the river – caused by degradation of land by human activity elsewhere in the river system – has aggravated the problem.

“The siltation obstructs the river’s flow, and causes a sharp rise in the water level over its banks here, as we saw a few days ago.”

The volumes of water are unprecedented, said Soungalo. “The water level climbed to 618 centimetres on Aug. 21, a peak higher than anything recorded in our database, which goes back to 1929.”

The Nigerien minister for agriculture, Oua Seydou, said 3,000 hectares of irrigated crops had been submerged, doing an estimated 5.8 million dollars of damage.

Further downstream, floodwaters killed seven people at Karimama and Malanville in northern Benin. In Nigeria, the National Emergency Management Agency said that water levels in two large reservoirs along the Niger River were at the highest level seen in 29 years, and ordered evacuation from low-lying areas in five states. The Nigerian Red Cross reported that 137 people had already been killed by flooding in that country since July, with 35,000 more displaced.

The threat is not limited to the 4,000 kilometre long Niger River. Heavy rains across West Africa are also causing other rivers to burst their banks.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that more than 400,000 people had been affected by floods In Chad, 255,000 hectares of crops were submerged and more than 73,000 houses destroyed. That country is preparing to spend two million dollars on emergency assistance and has asked for help from donors and humanitarian agencies amid fears of food insecurity.

An emergency release of water from a dam in Cameroon caused the Benue River to overflow, killing 30 people downstream in Nigeria.

In Senegal, 13 people have been reported killed by floods, with a lack of proper sanitation and drainage blamed.

Issoufou Maïgari, a hydrologist at the Agrhymet Regional Centre based in Niamey, said such rapid flows in the Bafing, a tributary of the Senegal River, have not been measured since 1961.

This year’s flooding in the Niger River basin only adds to the many challenges faced by governments in the region. The floods ironically follow several seasons of drought that have devastated farmers and herders in the Sahel.

Also worrying are various reports dating back to June and July that early rainfall in southern Algeria and northern parts of Niger, Mali and Chad created conditions for unusually large swarms of locusts that could threaten crops later this year.

Effective control of these pests, assistance to farmers, delivery of humanitarian aid – even a proper assessment of the various threats to agriculture and food security – are all complicated by armed rebellion in northern Mali and lower but worrisome levels of insecurity in Algeria, Libya, Niger and Chad.

The situation underscores the interdependence of people across borders. Averting a full-scale humanitarian crisis in the Sahel this year may require coordinated efforts throughout the region, experts say.

When her name is called, Rékia Djibo leaves the group of women gathered in front of the school in Toula, and takes a confident step towards the door. Djibo is one of the recipients of a cash transfer from the World Food Programme here on the outskirts of the southwestern Niger city of Tillabéri.

Each of the women here receives the equivalent of 60 dollars from WFP every month, intended to enable some of this drought-stricken country’s most vulnerable households to buy food.

“With this money, we’ll first of all buy staples and spices so that we can go to work in our fields,” Djibo told IPS.

The 42-year-old is the senior wife in a polygamous household. Though she was the one chosen to receive the transfer, she said she consults her husband and her co-wife to set priorities for spending the money to care for all of their six children.

Zalika Hado is another of the women waiting to receive the monthly grant in Toula.

“Since we started receiving the money,” the 39-year-old mother of two told IPS, “our priority has been to buy food as intended. If there’s anything left over, we spend it on basic necessities like soap, sugar and clothes for the children.”

The cash transfer programme is run by the WFP office in Niamey, the capital, supporting a wider emergency plan established by the Nigerien government in response to the severe food crisis that has hit the country after a poor harvest.

The 2010-2011 growing season left the country with a cereal deficit of some 600,000 tonnes, according to the National Food Crisis Prevention and Management System.

“The operation began in May and will continue until September,” Giorgi Dolidze, WFP programme officer in Niamey, told IPS.

“We pay a grant of 32,500 CFA francs – with no conditions attached – to extremely poor Nigerien families at the end of each month so they can afford to buy food in local markets,” he said.

“Traditionally, the WFP provides food, but we decided to diversify our interventions by providing money directly, in areas where markets are functioning well, to allow beneficiaries themselves to buy what they want to eat,” Dolidze added.

WFP is working in partnership with local and international non-governmental organisations, micro finance institutions and a mobile phone company to implement the initiative.

“We are one of the implementing agencies,” said Illo Mamoudou from the international charity Oxfam, “and in this capacity we create lists of beneficiaries nominated by a local committee in the areas covered by the operation. We also educate the beneficiaries regarding use of the money and supervise distribution at the end of each month.”

WFP staff member Midou Bawa Youssifi told IPS that money is being distributed in 21 of the country’s 36 counties. “In three urban areas –Agadez, Tahoua and Tillabéri – we transfer the money using mobile phones, but in rural communities, we work with micro finance institutions to send the money to beneficiaries,” he said.

“The operation reaches 158,000 households with a total of 1,166,000 people, to whom we distribute at the end of each month a total of 5,136,432,500 CFA (around 9.7 million dollars),” he added.

Dolidze said 99 percent of those chosen to receive money on behalf of their households are women. “A post-distribution study that we carried out revealed that up to 95 percent of the money is effectively spent on buying food,” he said.

“It’s manna from heaven,” said beneficiary Djoumassi Ali. “With the money that I’ve just received, I will go straight to the market to buy maize, millet and seasoning because our household ran out several days ago.”

Four figures bend intently over their work in one corner of the large vegetable garden near the western Niger village of Dioga. Months after the village’s main harvest has been brought in – and eaten up – the irrigated green of the garden is welcome relief in a part of the country where hunger never seems far away.

The three-hectare garden is managed by women from this village and surrounding settlements in the rural district of Torodi.

Lettuce, tomatoes, cabbage; onions and peppers, aubergine, okra, and squash – Aminata Douramane may be 60 years old, but she shows few signs of slowing down as she ticks off the list of vegetables she grows here. Oh: and mango, guava, lemon and orange trees.

“I’ve also been growing moringa for the past three years,” she said, showing off a plot of land adjacent to her lovingly-cared-for vegetables, where she has a stand of 80-odd Moringa oleifera trees.

“The three children that you saw helping me are my grandchildren. The eldest is 13, and the youngest is eight. They’re all going to school, so it’s only when they’re not in class that they come to lend a hand,” Douramane told IPS.

Elsewhere on the lushly green site, covering an area of three hectares, other women are also busy caring for their plants.

“I’m here to make sure the labourer who helps me waters the plants well,” said Zeïnabou Boureïma. “It’s very hot now, so it’s important to do it right because the plants need lots of water.”

The women all belong to an association called Cernafa, which means “cooperation” in the local language, Djerma. “We were about fifty women at the beginning in 2002, when we got started here on a plot the chief made available to us,” said Douramane, who is president of the group.

“It was very difficult at the start, because of a lack of water. People took us for fools,” she told IPS.

“But now the group has more than 100 women, and through this garden we have become the pride of the village and the Torodi district. Three years ago, we had saved enough to buy 4.2 hectares of land for about 400,000 CFA francs (around 772 dollars) to respond to requests and diversify our range of produce,” she added.

“What motivated the women of Dioga to start growing vegetables was food insecurity, which is chronic in this region,” said Salou Moumouni, principal of the village’s school and an informal advisor to the group.

“Immediately following the harvest each year, their husbands leave for cities in the region, often leaving the women and children without enough food,” he said.

“Now they look after their households with the income from selling vegetables while the men are away,” Moumouni told IPS.

“I decided to volunteer to support the group because I saw it was led by very courageous women, ready to overcome any obstacle to avoid being dependent,” he said.

Bibata Garba, another member of Cernafa, told IPS: “When the project started, I would earn 60,000 CFA (around 115 dollars) from the growing season between December and April. But this time around, I got more than 210,000 CFA (405 dollars) over the same period, thanks to a good harvest.”

The women’s efforts have attracted support from beyond their village.

“The determination by the women of Dioga to fight against hunger and poverty through their gardening scheme led us to begin assisting them in 2004, strengthening their capacity, particularly in agricultural techniques and organisational matters,” said Amadou Boubacar, president of Action for Sustainable Development (ADD), an NGO based in Niamey, the Nigerien capital.

“We provided the group with four modern boreholes, a water tower for a drip-irrigation system which we installed on the site with support from ICRISAT (the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics), and a motorised pump. We supplied them with seeds and fertiliser and we also taught some of the members to read,” he said.

Boubacar told IPS that ADD also helped the women get financial support from Crossroads International, a Canadian NGO working to reduce poverty with a particular emphasis on empowering women.

According to Aïssa Boukari, Cernafa’s treasurer, the Nigerien authorities and other partners, such as the international charity Oxfam and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, have also provided assistance in the form of watering cans, rakes, hoses, hoes, and seeds.

“It is difficult to give exact figures for the production of lettuce and vegetables which are sold before harvest, or harvested and taken directly to the market by producers; but we do know that the total return from sales from December 2011 to April 2012 was around five million CFA (more than 9,500 dollars),” Boukari told IPS.

“And the harvest’s not over, since for the past three years we’ve decided to spread production over the whole year.”

According to the government, irrigated farming, including market gardens, has this year allowed the country to produce the equivalent of 325,000 tonnes of grain, against an overall deficit of 600,000 tonnes recorded during the 2011-2012 agriculture campaign.

This shortfall is at the heart of the food crisis which is still affecting 8.3 million of the 15.7 million people in this West African nation.

Bitterness is written all over Boureïma Hamado’s face as he prepares to return home after selling his onion crop at the Katako market in the Nigerien capital, Niamey. He’s taken a big loss on the harvest.

Onion producers in Niger face huge problems selling their crop because the market is saturated. Credit: Sustainable Sanitation/CC BY 2.0

Hamado, 35, tells IPS he brought 20 sacks of onions – 140 kilos in total – to Niamey hoping to sell them for a good price, which would have allowed him to settle his debts with something left over for basic needs.

“I needed to sell each sack for 4,500 francs CFA (around nine dollars), though I was expecting to get at least 6,500 CFA per bag. This venture has cost me more than 100,000 CFA (200 dollars) and I lost out at every point, because just to bring the onions here, I borrowed 15,000 CFA,” he says.

“I bet on high profits from onions – which were selling for more than 25,000 CFA (50 dollars) a bag last year – and increased my production, but I didn’t account for a glut on the market,” he says.

Around 300,000 Nigerien farmers grow onions, generating revenue equivalent to around 100 million dollars a year, according to a Niamey-based smallholders’ organisation, the Federation of Market Garden Cooperatives of Niger (FCMN-Niyya).

This year, onion producers face huge problems selling their crop because the market is saturated, according to FCMN-Niyya president Idrissa Bagnou.

“There was a bumper harvest because farmers have become more professional, have had better access to seeds, and the total number of farmers has gone up. Unfortunately, consumption has not also increased, either locally or in the countries to which our produce is usually exported,” Bagnou told IPS.

“Foreign traders, who usually buy onions throughout the year, hadn’t finished selling off stock harvested in September 2011 from Agadez (in northern Niger) when the December-February crop from other parts of the country came onto the market,” he said. “That’s where the steep fall in the price has come from.”

With an average annual production of 500,000 tonnes, Niger is the leading producer of onions in the West African Economic and Monetary Union area, according to figures from PRODEX, the Agro-Pastoral Export and Market Development Project, based in Niamey.

“Output, more than 70 percent of which is exported to Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Benin and Togo, has shot up this year, thanks to the sharp rise in the price of onions last year – they sold for up to 100,000 CFA (200 dollars) a bag at one point during the 2010-2011 season,” Dr Idé Tahirou, who monitors the onion market for a U.S. NGO with an office in Niamey, International Relief and Development, told IPS.

“It’s this sudden spike in the price which pushed many smallholders to plant onions,” said Tahirou. FCMN-Niyya estimates that this year’s harvest will be over 600,000 tonnes.

Elhadj Amadou Dan-Rani, an onion exporter in Niamey, explained that farmers also face competition from further afield. “Our customers in neighbouring countries still have large stocks of onions, originating not only from Niger but from Burkina Faso, Mali and even a European country like the Netherlands. That’s why exports have slowed.”

While onion producers are in turmoil, consumers are delighted. “In 15 years, I have never seen the price fall so low,” Fatouma Harouna, a Niamey restaurant owner, told IPS.

“A bag of onions which last year cost as much as 40,000 CFA (80 dollars) is now selling for 5,000 CFA. It’s truly a bargain for us,” she said.

Tahirou said the high prices last year were simply due to a temporary shortage. He estimated that the price of a 12-kilo sack of onions in normal times is around 40 dollars.

Responding to the problem, the government met with stakeholders in the onion sector in the central town of Tahoua in early March to look at ways to help distressed producers and to better organise the commercialisation of the crop.

Abdoulsalam Douma, an expert at FCMN-Niyya, says one short-term solution would be for the government to buy part of this year’s harvest directly, paying producers at least 40 dollars a bag.

“But above all,” Douma said, “what’s needed are loans to smallholders to build storage facilities, and the establishment of offices to coordinate commercialisation in all the onion-producing areas and allow farmer associations to better organise their sales over time.”

The little village of Chinagoder, on the Niger-Mali border, has become a refugee camp, flooded with Malian families fleeing fighting between their regular army and Tuareg rebels known as the MNLA – the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad.

Niger is already stressed by drought and poor harvests. Credit: Catherine-Lune Grayson/IRIN

In the past month, more than 15,000 Malians have arrived across the border, entering a region of western Niger that is already stressed by drought and poor harvests. The districts of Ayourou, Koutoubou, Yassan Banibangou, Mangaïzé and Chinagoder – all in the western Tillabéri region of the country – have become the arrival point for refugees.

“Usually home to fewer than 1,700 residents, our village now holds more than 6,500 people, mostly Malian families from Ménaka and Aderaboukane who have arrived with no resources,” Zakari Djibo, younger brother of Chinagoder’s chief, told IPS.

“The influx of refugees began on Jan. 26 and grew, day by day, to the point where it overwhelmed our ability to house and care for them,” Djibo said. “Despite this, we are continuing to welcome these families in distress and give them hospitality.”

All around the village, clusters of shacks have sprung up to provide shelter for the refugees.

“Our situation is gradually improving,” Fatima Alhacen, a 39-year-old mother of six, told IPS. “We now have mats, blankets, cooking utensils and a bit more to eat, thanks to the food aid that the Nigerien government brought for us at the beginning of last week.”

Comforting a tearful 18-month-old baby, Alhacen added,”The first few days, we had to make do with millet bran that we were given by the people here – who are themselves facing problems finding food; but now we have millet flour for porridge, pâte and even rice in our daily menu.”

Clashes between Mali’s army and MNLA rebels have led to the displacement of 44,000 Malians into neighbouring countries, particularly Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Niger – which by itself has recorded the arrival of more than 15,000 refugees, according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.

The MNLA is demanding independence for Azawad, a region in the north of Mali – a move which has been rejected by the Malian government. At a Feb. 17 summit of the Economic Community of West African States, regional leaders also condemned the rebellion.

Humanitarian agencies have also noted the presence of a number of Malian soldiers amongst those seeking refuge in Mali. One such is Chief Warrant Officer Yaouchan Maïga, a medical orderly with Mali’s 143rd Nomad Military Company, normally based in the northern Malian town of Aderaboukane.

“We spent 11 days on alert,” Maïga told IPS,” waiting for reinforcements which never came, until our unit was attacked and destroyed.”

Along with 26 other members of his unit, he had crossed the border to Chinagoder. He said a first group of 24 soldiers – some traveling with their families – had already passed through the Nigerien village. Like them, Maïga’s group will be sent to Niamey, the capital of Niger, before returning to Mali.

Northern Mali’s armed conflict is being closely monitored by the Burkinabè authorities, who fear that their territory could become a safe haven for rebels; on its part, the government of Niger fears contagion, having experienced Tuareg rebellions of its own in the 1990s and more recently in 2007.

“Burkina Faso will not serve as a rear base for rebellion,” Djibril Bassolé, the Burkinabè Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Cooperation told a French radio station on Feb. 11.

This position was supported by Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaoré, who stressed that what is going on is “first, a problem between Malians”, and called for the initiation of “an inclusive dialogue” to restore peace. Compaoré met with his Malian counterpart, Amadou Toumani Touré, on the sidelines of a regional summit on education in Ouagadougou on Feb. 13.

In Niger, participants in earlier uprisings were warned against any thoughts of returning to arms by Rhissa Ag Boula, a prominent figure in the 1990s rebellion, as well as by Colonel Mahamadou Abou, the head of Niger’s High Authority for the Consolidation of Peace (a government body charged with dialogue, mediation and implementation of several peace accords) on the occasion of a Peace and Development Forum held in Arlit, northern Niger, at the end of January.

“The people will strongly resist any adventurers who might wish to take up arms again,” warned Colonel Abou.

“The recurrence of rebellion holds back development in the north of Mali,” said Bilal Ag Altinine, the representative of the Malian refugees at Chinagoder. “A country is not built by force of arms.”

He called on the Malian authorities to find a definitive solution to the problem.

“We are tired of rebellion,” said Binta Mohamed, a woman from Ménaka, the northern Mali town that the rebels first attacked on Jan. 17. “We want lasting peace so we can better fight against the poverty that surrounds us.”

(END/2012)

Women have been left in charge of many of the households in the village of Zamkoye-Koïra, in western Niger, as food shortages have driven male family members to leave in search of work elsewhere. A national survey of vulnerable households shows that 5.4 million people face food insecurity across Niger.

A young child suffering from malnutrition at a nutritional recovery center in Maradi region in central-east Niger. Credit: UNICEF/Giacomo Pirozzi

“The men have gone to look for a way to feed the women and children left behind in the village, because there was no harvest at all this year,” 40-year-old Bibata Mounkaïla told IPS.

“We’ve eaten only once a day for several months,” the mother of eight said, in the midst of making a simple porridge out of sorghum that will have to satisfy her family for the whole day. “The situation also means that our children are no longer going to school – the nearest one is in a neighbouring village, three kilometres from here.”

Aoudi Adamou, a family head who has chosen to stay, fears the crisis will grow worse if food aid to vulnerable people, announced by the government, arrives late.

“It’s only thanks to support from other families that some are still finding something to eat,” he told IPS, “but this situation cannot last for long. The authorities have to come quickly with aid if we are to avoid a disaster.”

Adamou’s distress call is echoed from several parts of the landlocked West African country, which this year faces a serious food crisis following a poor growing season in 2010 to 2011. Poor rains resulted in a deficit of more than half a million tonnes of grain and a shortfall of fodder for livestock of more than 10 million tonnes.

The vulnerability survey, carried out in December 2011, found that more than a third of the population of 15.7 million are in a position of food insecurity – 1.5 million will face severe food shortages.

The government and its partners are trying to mobilise resources to avert this major food crisis – “which is already upon us”, according to Eric-Alain Ategbo, the chief nutrition expert for the United Nations Children’s Fund office in Niamey, the Nigerien capital.

According to Ategbo, some 330,000 children are facing severe malnutrition presently, and nearly 700,000 more face moderate hunger. “We have seen 20,000 cases of malnourishment across the country, with 5,000 new cases recorded each week (in medical centres).”

Launching an appeal for aid in the western town of Tillabéri on Jan. 17, Nigerien Prime Minister Brigi Rafini said the country needed some 224 million dollars.

These resources would be put towards actions to ease the crisis, such as the launch of a major expansion of irrigated farming, the purchase and distribution of animal fodder, and other efforts against malnutrition, according to Rafini.

But for Hassoumi Sadou, a member of a farmers’ cooperative in Niamey, “the success of the operation will depend on the direct involvement of producers in the implementation of the actions. This is still not the case,” he told IPS.

The international non-governmental organisation Save the Children, based in London, has spoken out in support of the Nigerien government, calling on the international community to urgently mobilise funds for children threatened by malnutrition.

In a communiqué published on Jan. 27, the NGO said some three million Nigerien children are facing hunger, putting the cost of interventions needed to avoid disaster at 47 million dollars.

N’Dèye Marianne Tounkara, Advocacy Director for the Newborn & Child Survival programme at the Niamey office of Save the Children, says the appeal aims bring international attention to the risk of a major food and nutrition crisis in Niger in the coming weeks.

“We must act quickly to put in place corrective and preventive measures to reduce the threat,” she told IPS.

By Ousseini Issa
NIAMEY, May 10 2011 (IPS)

In anticipation of growing sorghum during the coming rainy season, Hamadou Abdou and his son are busy preparing the soil on the family’s farm in Bougoum, a village in the west of Niger.

Abdou and his son are building up beds in the form of a crescent moon. “I learnt this technique for upgrading soil that has become unproductive through the land salvaging activities carried out as part of a programme that is combating the silting up of the Niger River bed,” Abdou tells IPS.

He adds: “Last year, I harvested nearly two 100-kilogramme bags of sorghum from this piece of land which I hadn’t worked for several years, because it was so arid. This year I hope the yield will be even better.”

Back in the capital, Niamey, Ichaou Galadima, national coordinator of the programme to reduce siltation in the Niger River basin, explains further: “Subsistence farmers learned the half-moon technique (in 2008) and tried it out on gentle slopes that have been silted up, in our sites of intervention.”

The Niger Basin Project Against Siltation

The farmers were trained by technicians from Galadima’s project. “This programme, which involves 45 villages located in the river’s western catchment area, started in 2005 to expand and strengthen the initiative that had been launched two years earlier by the Nigerien authorities in Bougoum,” explains Galadima.

“The five-year programme has been piloted by the Niger basin authority in Niamey and also includes Burkina Faso and Mali, at a total cost of 22.9 billion CFA francs (around 51 million dollars),” Seyni Seydou, regional coordinator of the programme in Niamey, tells IPS.

The Niger River, which runs for 550 kilometres through the southwest part of the country, has for decades been faced with the phenomenon of siltation of its bed, accelerated by the severe desertification of the catchment areas, according to environmental experts.

“As there’s practically no more vegetation to reduce the force of the runoff, the water creates ravines through which large amounts of sand and other debris are flushed into the river,” Souley Altiné, an environmental technician at Niamey, tells IPS.

Galadima’s programme is focused on slowing this phenomenon, which is seriously compromising socio-economic activity around the river. The measures taken include building berms, stabilising sand dunes, and planting trees. He says they have also allowed agricultural land to recover and reduce the flow of sand that the stream waters carry into the river.

Seydou ticks off the programme’s achievements in 2010: 47,338 hectares of protective measures and other measures to combat siltation.

“This includes 15,926 hectares of sand dune stabilisation, 25,629 hectares of rehabilitation of previously-damaged land, and 5,783 hectares of river bank protection.”

Success beyond reducing silt

At the Bitinkoji, Yetter Allah, Karey Gorou, and Bougoum sites, which include all the villages on the outskirts of Niamey where the river passes, IPS noted the restoration of vegetation to land that seven years ago was completely bare.

“We have gained a lot, not only in terms of money for this work. We are also now well-organised to promote local development,” says Hama Sadou, a smallholder farmer from Bougoum.

“From the construction of the berms, I earned a bit over 3,000 CFA francs a day (about $6.50). Due to the profitability of this work, in the last few years, many of the youth have not joined the seasonal exodus,” Sadou tells IPS.

Women have also benefited. “We have used them in the project to stabilise the sand dune, for carrying stones and growing seedlings, which is not as hard as digging for the berms,” says Galadima.

Bintou Abdou, a 30 year-old woman from Bitinkoji village, confirms enjoying some measure of financial autonomy thanks to the programme. “With the money that I receive on the site, I got into selling doughnuts, and thanks to this I am able to dress my children and see to some of the school related expenses,” she tells IPS.

Maïmouna Boubacar, another woman, has taken up raising small livestock. The 40-year-old says she now has 13 goats and seven sheep, as well as poultry, which today form the foundation of her household’s finances.

For Daouda Mounkaïla, an inhabitant of the Karey Gorou village, one of the most important gains of this programme has been the creation of village committees for the management of natural resources.

“The hay that we harvest on the restored sites is sold, and the money is deposited into a bank account that will take care of the village’s infrastructure needs.”

Excerpt:

By Ousseini Issa
EKRAFANE, Niger, Dec 9 2010 (IPS)

Bacharou Gorel had 300 head of cattle before the food security crisis began in Niger. Today he has only 53 left.

Cattle near Zinder, in southern Niger. Credit: Anne Isabelle Leclerq/IRIN

In the same region, Hamado Sambo lost 41 of the 50 cows that were his pride and joy. “I’ve got just nine presently. Rebuilding my herd is difficult. We’ll need at least a decade, maybe two, during which there isn’t another crisis like this,” Sambo said.

From Tilabéri in the west, through the central region of Maradi, and into Diffa in the far east of the country, no region has been spared this massive loss of livestock, according to Harouna Abarchi, from AREN (the Association for the Revival of Livestock in Niger), a non-governmental organisation based in Niamey, the Nigerien capital.

Niger carried out a general census of livestock in 2007, and found the country had 34 million animals, including 10 million cattle. Experts from the Ministry of Livestock and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organiszation are carrying out a careful assessment, but AREN’s preliminary estimate is that 60 to 70 percent of livestock have died.

Dr Sahabi Barthé, an official in the Livestock Ministry, puts the losses still higher, at least 80 percent. “These tremendous losses are due to the failure to help herders at the right moment. It was when the animals were totally exhausted that the first assistance began in July 2010.”

The catastrophe has aggravated poverty levels for nomadic women who make a living from the sale of milk and milk products. “We no longer have milk to sell to earn money,” said Maïmouna Ag Zeïdi, a resident of Abala, in the west of the country.

“Action should have begun following the early warnings in January. Food for the animals should have been put into storage in the pastoral zones; this wasn’t done,” said Ibrahim Yahaya Touraroua, a farmer and herder, and consultant for the international NGO Oxfam Novib, based in Niamey.

“The lack of fodder in sufficient quantities contributed greatly to the losses that were recorded. The authorities and their partners are now setting up depots everywhere they are needed,” Bilal Adamou, a herder from Abala told IPS.

To prevent a recurrence of the losses, herders and ministry officials recommoned increasing the number of storage points where animal fodder can be bought.   According to Abarchi, the needs assessment from the 2009 season shows demand for 16,000 tonnes of fodder; unfortunately, the government has only requested 10,000 tonnes from its partners.

For Touraoua, the second essential strategy to protect against future losses is the careful management of grazing lands, which are constantly exposed to devastating wild fires. Abarchi says more than 300,000 hectares of good pasture has been destroyed by fire in recent months.

In response, the government and its partners have begun constructing fire-breaks in the countryside, and involving herders in the construction.

“We are providing labour for the digging of trenches to prevent fire from spreading and destroying forage wherever it occurs,” said Adamou.

But Touraoua says it’s necessary to send tractors out to all rural districts to help speedily create the fire-breaks.

A third strategy to protect livestock from devastation is strengthening the capacity of herders to move, to look for pasture wherever it’s available – even in neighbouring countries.

“There are presently many problems at this level, that’s why we are calling for the effective application of Economic Community of West African States’ policy on the free movement of goods and people,” says Abarchi.

Excerpt:

In April, the United Nations World Food Programme estimated it would need 190 million dollars to respond to a food crisis threatening more than 7 million people in Niger. By July, the WFP had revised the amount needed upwards to $371 million: a month later, the U.N. agency has been forced to scale back aid for lack of funds.

Malnutrition check-up in Moghem health centre, in Niger's central region of Tahoua. Credit: Catherine-Lune Grayson/IRIN

Niger’s transitional government made a call for help to avert a famine affecting nearly half of the country’s 15 million people in April, citing a poor 2009 harvest, which left the country with a grain shortfall of more than 400,000 tonnes.

“Every week, we record more than 40 cases of acute malnutrition in our clinic,” Balkissa Issa, a nurse in the eastern region of Zinder told IPS.

Speaking to journalists, Mohamed Béavogui, director of the West and Central Africa division of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, confirmed the gravity of the crisis. “The situation for children is critical in Niger, but the response has been put in place to support women and children who are considered the most vulnerable by UNICEF and NGOs.”

He said the emergency aid by the government, its institutional partners and international NGOs took several forms, including providing subsidised grain, establishing work for food programmes, and distribution of food aid to the worst affected.

“The cost of a subsidised sack of 100 kilogrammes of millet, maize or rice is 13,000 francs CFA (around $26), compared to over 20,000 FCFA ($40) in the open market. We have already supplied more than 60,000 tonnes of grain to the region on these terms,” he said.

“In conjunction with the World Food Programme, we also distributed around 53,000 tonnes for free in June and July 2010.”

A similar operation to distribute 30,000 tonnes was planned for August, including the distribution of basic rations to children between six and 23 months throughout the country, he said.

But due to a massive shortfall in donor funds, the WFP has been forced to adopt a scaled back plan for August.

WFP aid will now only be distributed to families with children under the age of two, who will receive 50 kilogrammes of grain, less than is necessary for families of seven or more, according to information released by Oxfam, which distributes food for the WFP.

“This is an appalling situation,” Oxfam Deputy Regional Director in West Africa Raphael Sindaye said. “We have known about this crisis for months and yet more than a million people in Niger will continue to starve over the coming weeks and perhaps months.”

Through Oxfam alerted the international community to an impending regional famine as early as November of last year, Robert Bailey, Region Campaigns and Policy Manager in West Africa for Oxfam, said there was a sluggish response from donor nations.

“International systems didn’t invest enough in the response,” Bailey said. “[Donors] didn’t step up until July, which is too slow. The money is just not available.”

Under the new plan, about 60 percent of the affected population will be left to rely on aid from the Nigerien government, which Bailey said does not have the capacity to meet their needs.

“There are very little government resources available,” Bailey said. “The logistic pipelines are just not there.”

With the 2010 harvest still two months off, Niger is now at the peak of its food crisis, but Bailey said the WFP plans to double food rations in September in response to this month’s shortfall.

Additionally, Oxfam will administer work programs and other initiatives in the coming months to re-establish communities that were affected by the crisis, Bailey said.

“When a community goes through a food crisis, they come out vulnerable,” Bailey said. “We’re moving out a short-term view and focusing on the medium and long-term view.

*Chris Stein in Johannesburg contributed to this report.

By Ousseini Issa
HAMDALLAYE, Niger, Mar 31 2010 (IPS)

The cows Djibo Hama looks after belong to someone else, but he is diligent. Anticipating a severe shortage of good grazing in 2010, he secured cattle feed for the 35 that remain.

Herdsmen drawing water for their cattle in Niger. Credit: Edward Parsons/IRIN

According to statistics from the Ministry of Livestock and Animal Husbandry in Niamey, the Nigerien capital, the fodder deficit this year in Niger reached 16 million tonns of dry matter, posing a threat to the survival of roughly two-thirds of Niger’s livestock.

Hama says the suggestion to stockpile food for his herd came from the Niger Association for the Revitalisation of Livestock (known by its French acronym, AREN), a nongovernmental organisation based in Niamey, which seeks to develop new initiatives to enable farmers to adapt to climate change.

“The Association warned us of possible grazing problems very early this year, mostly because of poor rainfall. I had to sell one or two cows when prices were still good to be able to weather the rough times,” says Boubacar Belko, a shepherd who works with Hama.

“The same cow that you would sell for about 200,000 CFA francs (about $465 U.S.) less than three months ago will only get you 150,000 francs today ($348 US). And the price will keep dropping as animals lose their fat from lack of food,” Belko predicts.

“We no longer have enough milk to sell because animals are hungry. Four months ago, our herd produced 10 to 15 litres per day, but now we only get five litres,” said Maïmou Ibrahim, 46, a milk vendor from Hamdallaye.

In addition to stockpiling feed in anticipation of pasture shortages, AREN also supports animal feed diversification, securing pastures and advocates in favor of cross-border transhumance – seasonal migration of herds in search of pasture – said Harouna Abarchi, permanent secretary of the association.

“We also advise farmers on early transhumance and access to animal health services,” Abarchi told IPS.

To further refine these various interventions that aim, he said, to help farmers adapt to climate change, last year AREN launched rainfall and vegetation observation sites on both of the countries major axes of livestock movement.

“These observation sites – twenty for rainfall and seven for vegetation – are specific spots on the transhumance routes where we placed rain gauges to follow yearly variations in the amounts of rain collected,” Hassan Ibrahim, a member of the association told IPS.

“With the farmers help, we also observe changes in vegetation, and at the end of this three year phase, we plan on developing decision-making tools for political leaders and herders themselves,” says Abarchi.

According to AREN, the ultimate goal is to promote, the proliferation of watering holes and points of sale for animal feed, the cleaning up of water points, and the reintroduction of extinct forage species on transhumance corridors and in livestock living areas.

“We also want to improve farmers’ ability to make the right decisions at the right time, such as the early establishment of livestock feed reserves, destocking to reduce drought-related losses,” Abarchi explained.

Boubacar Diallo, president of the Northern Tillabéry Herders Council, an NGO based in Niamey, says this is a welcome initiative because it will strengthen the existing institutions.

“The acceleration of desertification has caused ponds to dry up prematurely in the grazing areas, which is a real headache for farmers. Digging wells in these areas will definitely be a great relief,” Diallo told IPS.

To supply farmers in the pastoral areas of the country, AREN has already launched 67 animal feed banks with an average capacity of 35 tonnes; there are 2,300 tonnes currently available to herders, according Abarchi.

At this point, the government of Niger has agreed to “furnish 32,471 tonnes of supplementary food, with the assistance of technical partners and NGOs, mainly to cover the needs of breeding cattle which make up 70 percent of bovine livestock,” says Dr. Sahabi Barthé, an official at the Ministry of Livestock.

“We also plan to purchase 1,024 tonnes of supplementary food to be sold to farmers at subsidised prices,” Barthé told IPS.

But for Elhadji Kimba Gado, a farmer based in Niamey, “stocking up isn’t enough, the main thing is for prices to be affordable.”

In this regard, Ibrahim from AREN does not hesitate to criticise the government. “In our banks the 70 kilo bag of food is sold at 3,500 CFA (about $8). The government wanted to price it at 6,000 FCFA (about $13) when even commercial vendors sell it at 7,000 FCFA ($16).   “Finally, under our pressure, the government decided to reduce its price to 4,000 CFA francs (about $9),” says Ibrahim.

Excerpt:

By Ousseini Issa
NIAMEY, Feb 26 2010 (IPS)

As its promised transition to democratic rule begins, the military junta that overthrew Nigerien president Mamadou Tandja on February 18 has named a former information minister, Mahamadou Danda, as the new prime minister while retaining legislative and executive powers for itself.

Danda, 59, is seen as unaffiliated to any political party, was appointed on Feb. 23 by the Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy (known by its French acronym, CSRD).

In a declaration broadcast nationally the previous day, CSRD head Djibo Salou was announced as head of state and the government; the junta will, for the moment, have the final word in governing the country.

Marou Amadou, president of a coalition of groups opposed to the ousted president known as the United Front To Safeguard Democratic Gains (FUSAD, after its French acronym, FUSAD) believes this first decree provides further guarantees of the junta’s intention to return power to civilians.

“The length of this transition will be decided after the consultations with all political and social stakeholders in the country announced by the junta,” Amadou told IPS. He hopes the transition will be neither too slow, nor overly hasty.

This opinion is shared by a wide spectrum of political and social actors in the country.

“It would be pointless to botch the transition and end up in the same political quagmire faced in recent months. The junta will need time to reorganise and create conditions for sustainable democracy,” Hadjio Issa, a teacher in Niamey, said in an interview with IPS.

Tandja’s attempt to remain in power beyond the end of his maximum two terms as president led to political deadlock in 2009, ultimately paving the way for February’s coup d’état.

For Daouda Hamani, one of the leaders of the Coordination des forces pour la démocratie et la République, a Niamey-based coalition of political parties and civil society organisations, “the junta has the internal and external support necessary to conduct a smooth transition.”

During the transitional period set out by the junta, a constitution and electoral law will be developed, said Boureïma Idrissa.

“However (the Feb. 22 decree) doesn’t provide any details as to the type of government that will be created. The only information is that its members are appointed by decree by the Head of State,” Idrissa said.

A source close to the junta, who requested anonymity, told IPS “the team will be composed mostly of civilians, but most importantly people with integrity and skills.”

“Our intention is not systematic exclusion, we want to create the conditions to return to a viable and sustainable democracy,” the source told IPS.

The issue of exclusion is of particular concern to supporters of the ousted president, who fear the junta will launch a “witch hunt” in response to persistent demands from Tandja’s opponents.

“The CSRD has promised to involve all components of the nation in the process, and should not let itself be carried away by a wave of political settling of scores,” said Abdoulaye Boubacar, a supporter of Tandja’s government.

“These are basically the same players – that led President Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara to his death – who today pushed Tandja out. There must be sanctions against them to avoid another interruption of our democratic process in a few years,” Maria Amadou, a female board member of FUSAD, told IPS.

Maïnassara himself staged a coup in 1996, again intervening in a civilian struggle for power; he presided over the drafting of a new constitution by May, was himself voted in as president in a contested poll in July, and ruled until his assassination in 1999.

Tandja is being held in a military barracks. Six other members of his government are also in detention, including the former ministers for the interior, the economy, mines and energy, and the prime minister, Ali Badjo Gamatié. IPS’s source close to the junta did not provide any reason why they were still in detention, despite the CSRD’s promise to release them.

“These ministers will be released later,” the source said.

Marches demonstrating popular support for the junta in Niamey and various places in the interior have provoked some concern from state employees, among them Ousseini Diori, secretary general of the teachers’ association in Niger.

“The junta’s strong internal support should not serve as a pretext to shirk its duties, such as the regular payment of wages,” he said.

“We still remember the sad experience of the military transition of 1999 when no wages were paid to workers for nine months. We are not willing to live through that sacrifice again,” Diori told IPS.

Charles Fromm adds from Washington: U.S. officials called for an expedited transition to democracy as hundreds of supporters rallied behind military leaders in the wake of a coup in the central-african nation of Niger.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State William Fitzgerald said the coup may well launch a democratic turn for Niger, which saw the majority of its international aid frozen and sanctions imposed last year after President Tandja dissolved parliament in a bid to extend his rule.

“The U.S. position is clear: (the junta) have got to show as soon as possible that they are genuinely seeking to restore the constitution and to move to a return to democratic and civilian rule,” Fitzgerald said in an interview with Reuters over the weekend.

State Department official Philip J. Crowley, told reporters the U.S. does not “in any way, shape, or form, defend violence of this nature. But clearly, we think this underscores that Niger needs to move ahead and – with the elections and the formation of a new government,” in reference to the military junta.

Earlier in February, the United Nations pledged to provide the impoverished West African state with supplementary funding to avoid food shortages. More than half Niger’s population, 7.8 million people, is projected to face moderate to severe food insecurity in the coming year.

“It is imperative to support the Government in its efforts to mobilise the resources to satisfy the food needs of the most vulnerable,” resident UN Humanitarian Coordinator Khardiata Lo N’Diaye said.

*This article has been slightly modified since the original appeared in French on Feb. 24

(FIN/IPS/AF/WA/IP/PR/CS/OI/AIT/TRAFR-NM/CF/TG/10)

Excerpt:

By Ousseini Issa
NIAMEY, Jul 5 2007 (IPS)

Nigeria and Niger, in West Africa, are neighbouring states. But the two countries have more than a border in common; they are also share a number of river basins that are under threat, and the responsibility for conserving them.

“The degradation of land in the trans-frontier river basins of Niger and Nigeria has advanced to the point that it is undermining local and regional economies, and increasing the vulnerability of rural communities,” Souley Aboubacar, Nigerien co-ordinator of the joint programme, told IPS.

Mallam Tchiari Assouman is living proof of this.

Originally from Douchi, a northern Nigerian village bordering on Niger, he once farmed 1.5 hectares – but saw his land become steadily less productive: “The field that I farmed at Douchi no longer brings me much. It was hard to get four sacks of 100 kilogrammes of millet from it during my last season, while previously I got up to 15 sacks.”

As a result, he had to immigrate to Niamey, the capital of Niger, where he now sells peppers to survive.

The situation was scarcely better for Madou Boukary, from Diffa in southern Niger. “What is the good of continuing to farm land that does not even bring me five sheaves of millet at the harvest?” he asks.

Nonetheless, Boukary has elected to remain in Diffa – farming peppers rather than millet in an effort to make a better living.

Now, an initiative is underway to conserve four river basins – Komadougou Yobé, Tagwaï-El Fadama, Gada-Goulbi, and Maggia-Lamido – the ‘Ecosystems Integrated Management Project’ (Projet de gestion intégrée des ecosystems, PGIE).

The PGIE is intended to restore the ecosystems of the four basins and slow desertification, rehabilitating 48,000 hectares of degraded land and reducing rates of sedimentation by about 35 percent – notes documentation for the project.

“These regions overflowed with a mosaic of ecosystems of great biodiversity, (and) plants…about 400 species adapted to the Sahelian environment,” says Emmanuel Oladipo, PGIE regional co-ordinator.

With the shortage of arable land and grazing areas in trans-frontier regions, the project also aims to help communities make sustainable use of natural resources and share these equitably.

In addition, it hopes to raise household revenues by 10 percent.

This comes as the border situation has led to a worsening of poverty amongst people in the river basins, leading to tensions over use of the few remaining natural resources, says Seidou Amadou, principal technical counselor of the PGIE.

Communities will be directly involved in implementing the project through attending to degraded land, and helping to conserve biodiversity, according to Oladipo: “From now until the end of the project, in 2013, we also expect at least 50 percent of communities to master good practices for management of natural resources.”

The project is being carried out in 24 pilot villages in the two countries, and will affect over 12 million people, mainly crop and stock farmers.

The basins cover a surface area of approximately 100,000 square kilometres and traverse the states of Borno, Yobé, Gigawa, Katsina and Sokoto in Nigeria – and the regions of Tahoua, Diffa, Zinder and Maradi, in Niger.

Aboubacar puts the cost of the project at 29 million dollars. It is jointly financed by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), and Niger and Nigeria.

The donor-supported GEF assists developing nations to finance projects for environmental protection.

Implementation for the project got underway in recent weeks.

In the words of Aboubacar, the initiative “translates the political will of the authorities of the two countries to guarantee a fair sharing and a better management of natural resources in the four communal river basins.”

Excerpt:

By Ousseini Issa
NIAMEY, Feb 28 2007 (IPS)

Stretching over more than 4,000 kilometres, the Niger is West Africa’s longest river, and greatly threatened in the country of the same name by environmental degradation that is causing the water course to silt up.

“The lack of vegetation along the river prevents water retention during rainfall, and opens the door to soil erosion…So, gullies are created that channel water, sand and all sorts of debris towards the river,” says Mahaman Laminou Attaou, national director for the environment in Niger’s Ministry of Water Affairs, Environment and the Fight Against Desertification.

This trend has worsened as rains have become more torrential, and now compromises activities such as fishing, irrigation and navigation of the river by boat.

”We no longer have good fishing for much of the year. It has also become impossible to do irrigation because the river no longer has enough water,” Abass Sorko, a resident of Kombo in the centre of the country, told IPS.

Siltation is even putting the river’s ability to supply water to Niger’s capital of Niamey at risk, notes Attaou.

Officials are trying to deal with the problem, however.

In 2002 Niger launched a wide-ranging initiative to protect the drainage areas of the river, the Programme to Protect the Banks of the Niger. Funding was supplied under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative – started several years ago by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to help developing nations reduce unsustainable debt. More than two million dollars were made available for the project in its first year.

The programme focuses on building sand banks that are 60 metres long and about a metre high along the river basin to retain rain water, and prevent it from carrying solid matter towards the river bed, Attaou told IPS. Instead, the runoff water seeps into the soil, and raises the water table. This approach also has the benefit of encouraging plant growth on river banks.

According to Niger’s environmental directorate, more than 6,000 of the 100,000 hectares of land that need to be restored, have been dealt with over the past four years. Attaou estimates that a further 7,500 hectares will be restored this year.

In addition to fighting environmental degradation, the programme seeks to address poverty by creating jobs.

”When we began in Bougoum, we used between 800 and 900 people a year. But with the expansion of the programme to the eight regions of Niger, we increased this to 27,682 people in 2006, all of them rural youth,” says Attaou. (Bougoum is the town where the river basin initiative was launched. It is situated about 20 km west of Niamey.)

The good results shown by the programme prompted President Mamadou Tandja to increase its funding to about three million dollars per year in 2004, and to double the number of young people recruited to 60,000.

These jobs, notes Mahamadou Adamou of SOS Environment, a non-governmental organisation, also “contribute to stopping the exodus of rural youth to the coastal countries during the ‘dead season'”. The comment was in reference to the time of year when there is little agricultural activity, and few jobs for young people.

Environmental director Attaou says the success of the programme has also attracted the attention of donors, who have helped expand the land restoration campaign.

In 2006, Italy assisted with the creation of sand banks over 1,000 hectares in Keita village, in the centre-east of the country. In the course of three years, Monaco has helped build sand banks over 1,500 hectares.

The African Development Bank intends to fund 3,000 sand banks at a cost of about five million dollars in 2007 – while the World Bank has promised nearly six million dollars for the programme.

In Bougoum, the first results of the initiative are visible in the growing vegetation: IPS noted gum trees and grass covering the ground.

“I started land restoration at the opening of this site in 2002. Thanks to God, this work has allowed me have a certain amount of financial independence in relation to my husband,” Fatima Boukari, a 32-year-old housewife living in Bougoum, told IPS.

Salifou Ganda, a worker at the Bougoum site, also praised the initiative.

“Thanks to this work, today I make a living for myself and I meet my family’s needs without having to sell grain or animals,” he said in an interview with IPS.

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By Ousseini Issa
NIAMEY, Jan 18 2007 (IPS)

The new year is looking much like the old for certain residents of the “Pays-Bas” shantytown in Niger’s capital, Niamey. Four months after seeing their homes demolished in the name of safety and security, they are still waiting for resettlement at an alternative, developed site promised by authorities.

“I am currently living with a neighbour whose home was spared, by chance” said Binta Tchindo, a divorced mother of five. The lack of privacy is terrible, she told IPS. Still, she cannot bring herself to rebuild her own house, as she fears it will only be destroyed again.

Home to more than 5,000 people, Pays-Bas derives its name from the French “bas-fonds”, a term for a slum, according to resident Alpha Seydou. It is located in the south-east of Niamey, on rugged ground along the road to the airport.

Claiming that the take-off and landing of planes made the position of the informal settlement hazardous, municipal officials decided to clear Pays-Bas by means of an operation that began in September, with military assistance.

“Catastrophes must be prevented. It’s for this reason that the residents of Pays-Bas must leave this dangerous zone that they are living in – illegally,” Soumaïla Yahaya, a municipal official, told IPS.

The operation was later postponed while a new living area was sought for residents, but not before violent confrontations had taken place between the inhabitants and security forces that led to about 20 youths from the area being questioned and jailed. Most are now out on bail.

“If we have settled on this site, from which they now want to chase us away, it’s because we are poor. (But) what I know is that the capital does not only belong to the rich; we also have a right to it,” Seydou told IPS.

It’s an argument that Yahaya dismisses: “We cannot continue to tolerate this anarchy consisting of people coming to set up homes without authorisation in vacant areas belonging to local authorities if we want to make a modern capital of Niamey.”

In an ironic twist, expulsion of shanty dwellers may also reflect how their areas are become more desirable places to live.

“Today, as the area (the settlement of Golf) has become up-market, they want to chase us again, chop down the trees and sell plots to wealthier Nigeriens,” said resident Zoubeirou Adamou.

In addition, informal settlements are accused of being security risks.

“These areas are dens of thieves who disturb the sleep of peaceful communities of the capital. The residents who live there did not ask anyone for authorisation before settling; as a result, they will be cleared off,” says Boubacar Ganda, president of the Council of the Niamey Urban Community (Conseil de la communauté urbaine de Niamey) – a body of elected officials.

But, this allegation is queried by Hamadou Boulama Tcherno who directs the Nigerien Social Forum, which has taken to heart the plight of thousands of people who have lived in the slums of Niamey for decades, and who are now being are cleared off or threatened with eviction – often without the offer of alternative places to settle.

He claims that the large majority of residents in Pays-Bas and certain other shanty towns are people who left their villages because of hunger or poverty, in the hope of finding a better life in Niamey, and that they’re not disturbing anyone.

“If rural areas are losing more and more of their youth to urban centres, it’s simply because of the poverty created by neo-liberal policies, which is today much more evident in rural areas than in town.”

According to a study done in 2005 by the National Institute of Statistics (l’Institut national de la statistique), the incidence of poverty at national level in Niger is 62.1 percent in urban areas, against 65.7 percent in rural areas.

Tcherno believes the solution to these problems is through the construction of social housing that the state could rent out to deprived communities at low cost, a suggestion government does not appear to endorse.

“We are in a free market; it is therefore illusory to believe that the state can meet this request,” retorts an official in the Nigerien Ministry of Town Planning, Habitat and Real Estate Registration, in Niamey.

The Nigerien Social Forum unites groups to pursue at national level the goals of the World Social Forum (WSF), which opposes globalisation in its current form. The seventh WSF is about to get underway in Nairobi, Kenya (Jan. 20-25).

Even for those who are allowed to remain in informal settlements, however, the future can be bleak. The slums in Niamey are afflicted by a severe shortage of social services, obliging residents to defecate outdoors.

“This situation exposes them to certain illnesses like cholera,” Illiassou Maïna, a doctor based in the capital, told IPS.

Excerpt:

By Ousseini Issa
NIAMEY, Aug 2 2006 (IPS)

As fears of its destruction mount, city authorities have taken steps to protect the forest, or the greenbelt, around Niamey and evict squatters living within its confines. The forest protects the city from encroaching desertification and the extremes of Niger’s climate.

Although an ultimatum to vacate the greenbelt was issued Apr. 30, IPS has verified that the forest is still being occupied by the squatters.

Maman Ibrahim, the regional environment director for the Greater Authority of Niamey, estimates the size of the greenbelt, set up in 1965, to be 2,500 hectares.

The most prominent tree in the forest is Neem, which has an ability to grow in hostile environment like desert. For more than a decade, the people living in these sprawling hamlets, which have sprung up in the greenbelt over the years, have cut and burnt down the neems.

”These people chop down trees illegally to build their huts and for firewood. There are also fires which cause considerable damage,” said Illia Yahaya, the head of the reforestation service at the Regional Department for Environment for the Greater Authority of Niamey.

Captain Mohamed Sidi, of the Niamey Fire Department, told IPS: ”We experience at least five fires a week in populated areas of the greenbelt in the dry season. According to our estimates, about 13 hectares of plants have been disappearing each year since the greenbelt was completed in 1993.”

The 6-million-dollar project was implemented in several phases between 1965 and 1993, with support from the United Nations and the World Bank, Ibrahim said.

”Until 1993 there were about 30 guards supported by forest rangers to provide security,” he noted. But security was discontinued due to a lack of resources to pay the guards and provide fuel for the forest rangers’ vehicles, according to Ibrahim.

Niger’s 2004 Forestry Law stipulates that no commercial activities may take place within the greenbelt and imposes fines of 100 to 1,000 dollars or three months in prison on anyone who destroys the forest.

”But since the authorities have become lax, the squatters have nothing to worry about,” Yahaya told IPS. The destruction of the forest continues. To prevent it from totally disappearing, the city authorities have decided to evict those living there, who mostly come from rural areas.

But the residents are not going without a fight. They are demanding that the authorities relocate them to a new site with basic amenities. ”Some of us have been living here for more than 20 years. Our children were born here and go to neighbouring schools,” Harouna Seydou, a 60-year-old head of a hamlet, told IPS.

”We won’t move as long as we don’t have a new place for settlement,” added Tahirou Adamou, a resident of one of the larger settlements.

Mamata Kindo, a 49-year-old widow, explained to IPS, ”We need a well, a school for our children, a market, and a health centre at the new site”. She has been living in the greenbelt with her six children for more than a decade.

Issoufou Garba, a Niamey resident, said the scramble for a space at the greenbelt began in the 1980s as Niamey, the capital, began expanding. This forced livestock breeders living near the city to relocate.

Niger also experienced drought from 1984 to 1985, ”which caused many people from the countryside to flee impending famine and migrate to urban centres”, according to Boureima Alpha Gado, a Niamey-based researcher.

Aboubacar Ganda, the president of the Greater Authority of Niamey, told journalists last month that ”the greenbelt is a hideout for bandits of all types who disturb the peace of the capital’s residents”.

But Abdoulaye Issa, the mayor of the Niamey IV district, has ruled out using force against the residents. ”It won’t be done by force. We are in the process of finding them a viable site to relocate, so we can save the woods which beautify our capital,” he said.

Local authorities could not establish the exact population of the greenbelt. ”The people living in the greenbelt were counted as part of Niamey during the 2001 general population and housing census, which makes it hard to determine how many they are,” Ismael Yahaya, a municipal councillor, told IPS. ”There are probably hundreds of families that today live in these woods, given the huge rents in the city, which are forcing people to leave town and take up residence there”.

Niamey’s population is estimated to be 800,000 – or 5.7 percent of the country’s 14 million people.

”The majority of the residents in the greenbelt are petty traders, carpenters, watchmen, labourers, cobblers, domestics who cannot afford to live in town,” Abdourahamane Noma, a Niamey-based sociologist, told IPS.

Marou Amadou of the Equity and Quality Coalition Against the High Cost of Living, a Niamey-based association of non-governmental organisations, said: ”The authorities should leave these people, who are not bothering anyone, alone. Where do they want them to go?”

But the authorities are committed to evict them. ”The reason their removal was deferred was to allow their children to finish out the school year,” explained the regional environment director, as he announced a plan to fence the greenbelt.

”This year, we were allotted 25 million CFA francs (about 50,000 dollars) in the budget, and they’ve been released. With this cash, we plan to enclose the first section and, as future funds come available, we’ll fence the remainder,” Ibrahim said.

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Excerpt:

By Ousseini Issa
NIAMEY, Aug 26 2005 (IPS)

Abdou Adamou spends his days in a pit 50 to 80 metres below ground at the Komabangou gold prospecting site. His job involves hacking up rocks and raising them to the surface with a bucket.

He is only 15 years old.

Komabangou, where Adamou works, is located some 175 kilometres southwest of the capital Niamey.

This mineral-rich region has sparked gold rush since 2001. A second gold-mining site at M’Banga, also located in southwest Niger, is some 95 kilometres from Niamey. The extraction of gold at M’Banga has, however, begun only recently.

“Each morning, they lower me into the shaft at 8 a.m. with the food and water I’ll need for the next 18 hours. In the beginning it was awful but once you get used to it, it becomes routine,” Adamou told IPS.

Like many other children, Adamou dropped out of school. “I left school when my parents decided to leave our village for Komabangou to look for gold. And since they had no one to leave me with, they brought me with them,” he said.

“If I could’ve found someone to take care of my child, I never would have brought him here. I would have let him to continue with his study,” Adamou’s father told IPS. “It’s hard for everyone in the village. People don’t want to take care of other people’s children when there’s nothing in it for them.”

Harouna Sadou, a Niamey sociologist, said: “Rural elementary school pupils are confronted with guardianship problem, especially when the school doesn’t have a feeding programme. Even in secondary schools, when the child does not receive a government allowance, it’s hard to find a family that will provide for him. And that frequently explains why children end up leaving school.”

More than 100 children between the ages of 10 and 16 are believed to be working in Komabangou.

According to Niger’s 1993 mining code, the minimum age at which one may work in mines and quarries is 18. But no inspectors have been assigned to the gold mining sites. Only occasionally does a team arrive for a surprise inspection, according to Ibrahim Balla Souley, the national coordinator for the International Programme for the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC-Niger), based in Niamey.

“To work at the site, one doesn’t need papers to document your age for the mine owners. And the government does nothing at the point of recruitment. Here, it’s basically the informal sector which operates,” Daouda Kabani, the general secretary of the Gold Prospectors Association of Komabangou told IPS.

According to him, no gold miner or parent has ever been prosecuted for a child labour offence.

IPEC, which set up shop in Niger in 2002, is run by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The group seeks to abolish child labour worldwide.

“IPEC-Niger is a programme that was negotiated by Niger government with the ILO to fight child labour,” Souley explained.

More than 15,000 people of various nationalities from West Africa live at the Komabangou prospecting site. The concession was abandoned by a foreign firm in 2001 for lack of profit.

”Right next to the Nigeriens, the people from Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali and Togolese work together. They’ve come to prospect for gold or to engage in trade,” Kabani explained.

”That’s the reality. Children constitute a workforce here. They work in various capacities. Some help with the rock-crushing; others work in extraction; others in transporting the water used to mix the crushed sand obtained after pulverising the rock,” Kabani explained. A gram of gold fetches between 10 and 12 dollars for the miner, he said.

According to Kabani, some gold prospectors pay about 20 dollars a month to the children they employ, others 30 dollars. But they provide the children – who came to work at the site without their parents or guardians – with free room and board.

Adults doing similar jobs earn double, Kabani said, because they produce more.

The minimum monthly wage of a government worker in Niger is about 50 dollars.

Mahamadou Aboubacar, 13, supplies water at the gold prospecting site, where he has lived with his mother for three years. ”I began working after my father died to help my mother out. I fill about three 200-litre barrels of water every day, which I deliver to my employer on a cart one kilometre away,” he told IPS. He earns about six dollars a day.

”I have no means of support here except my child since the death of my husband. He’s the one who works and feeds and clothes me,” Mamata Gado, Aboubacar’s mother, told IPS.

”But parents also push their children to come and work here,” Souley acknowledged.

”The children are exposed to all sorts of risks like dust poisoning and possibility of tunnel collapsing,” Souley stated. There are also diseases connected to physical activity, like lumbago and injuries from hammers and pestles that the children grind rock with.

Lumbago is lower back pain or general pain in the lower back especially in younger people whose work involves physical effort.

Dr. Bako Bagassi from the National Programme Against Sexually Transmitted Diseases and HIV/AIDS in Niamey said the children are often exposed to and infected by various diseases.

”Many of these children begin sexual activity early. In Komabangou, more than 50 percent of sex workers are infected with HIV,” Bagassi said, referring to a 2003 survey conducted by a health group.

To ease the pandemic, the Niger branch of World Vision, an international non-governmental organisation (NGO), has been conducting awareness campaigns and training since 2004.

”We’ve trained about 100 community workers to conduct awareness campaigns in Komabangou and surrounding villages. We’ve also created an HIV/AIDS testing centre,” Abdoulaye Soumana, a World Vision worker, told IPS.

IPEC-Niger also established a primary school in Komabangou in 2002. It also trains children in revenue-generating activities such as selling water, using carts as a mode of transport.

”We built the first primary school on this gold-mining site and today it has about 140 children,” said Souley, who is happy that some parents have chosen to enrol their children and keep them in school.

”Niger has ratified various international conventions relating to the protection and promotion of children, including the Convention on the Rights of Children,” said Zakari Hamadou, from the Ministry of Public Service and Labour in Niamey. In addition, Niger’s Labour law bans child labour.

”These children operate in informal environment which complicates the task of labour inspectors. That’s why I think we have to concentrate more on awareness campaigns,” Souley recommended, pointing to poverty as the main cause of child labour.

Sixty-three percent of Niger’s population lives below the poverty line, according to the 2004 World Report on Human Development of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Excerpt:

By Ousseini Issa
NIAMEY, Apr 29 2005 (IPS)

“It’s not easy to give up a profession passed down to you by your parents that you’ve been at for years. But once you become aware of the grave harm you do others in this job, you have to quit,” says Salmou Himadou.

Until 2003, she was one of those who carried out the reviled practice of female genital mutilation, also referred to as female circumcision, in Niger. But two years ago she laid down tools with the help of a non-governmental organisation (NGO) which has realised that finances, as much as tradition, are at the heart of this practice.

“The NGO gave me a 50,000 CFA franc (about 100 dollars) loan to fund a new business. Thank God, I’m making a lot more money selling spices than I was as a circumcisor,” Himadou, who hails from the southern region of Tillaberi, told IPS.

The NGO in question is the Niger Committee on Deadly Traditional Practices (Comité nigérien sur les pratiques traditionnelles néfastes – Coniprat), based in the capital of Niamey.

“Himadou is one of about forty circumcisors that we’ve been able to retrain since we began operating in 1992,” says Coniprat president Maiga Amsou Amadou.

While some have joined Himadou in the spice trade, others have used their 100-dollar loans to start selling doughnuts, develop market gardens or extract peanut oil on a small scale.

“This (genital mutilation) is a subject which has long been taboo in our country. But by now, it has lost its mystique. People talk about it openly and circumcisors are ready to give up the profession to take on new ones, especially due to the awareness…and training campaigns we’ve conducted on the dangers of the practice,” Amadou told IPS.

Although circumcision was banned here in 2003 it remains widespread in the country, as elsewhere in Africa – where the United Nations Children’s Fund estimates that up to 130 million women have undergone the practice. According to Coniprat, the area of Tillaberi has one of the highest rates of circumcision in the country – about 30 percent. In the capital of Niamey and surrounding regions, the rate is 17 percent.

The practice involves the partial or complete removal of the clitoris, and the labia minora and labia majora, which are folds of skin around the urethral and vaginal openings. This procedure may be carried out using crude instruments such as pieces of glass, tin lids and razor blades, which are often unsterilized.

The resulting wounds are sewn up, leaving only a small orifice for the passage of urine and menstrual blood. Apart from the pain and trauma it causes, circumcision may lead to various forms of infection, incontinence, sterility – and difficulties in child birth, such as obstetric fistulas.

According to a study on fistulas conducted in 2003 by the United Nations Development Programme, about a fifth of women who were treated for this condition in Niger during 2002 had experienced some form of genital mutilation.

“My daughter is paying for her circumcision today. She suffers from a fistula that was operated on several times without success. And according to the physician, it was the excision she had in her childhood which worsened her case,” a woman at the Reception Center for Women with Fistulas, in Niamey, told IPS.

Fistulas occur during prolonged obstructed labour, when the blood supply to parts of the vagina, bladder and – on occasion – the rectum, is cut off. This causes the tissue in these areas to die, then rot, creating a hole through which urine and fecal matter flow. The resultant incontinence causes many girls and women to be excluded from society, and abandoned by their husbands.

Mutilation has also been known to cause death through severe bleeding. And, “Today, there is another serious danger, and that’s the spread of HIV/AIDS with the use of non-sterilized instruments by the circumcisor,” Dr Bako Bagassi of the Niamey-based National Programme Against Sexually Transmitted Diseases and HIV/AIDS told IPS.

Circumcision, typically carried out on children and teenagers, occurs for a variety of reasons. Some believe the practice reduces sexual desire on the part of a girl, ensuring that she remains chaste before marriage – and faithful afterwards. In other instances, circumcision marks a girl’s initiation into adulthood.

Certain communities practice circumcision because they believe female genitalia are unhygienic. There is also a belief that it is a religious requirement under Islam.

“For the communities that practice it, excision is an instrument that controls women’s sexuality; it is perceived as a socialization measure, a factor that stabilizes social order. Some even go so far as to seek its roots in Islam,” a sociologist told IPS.

But Imam Ali Soumaila, a religious leader who heads a mosque in Niamey, denies that circumcision is requirement for Muslims: “This practice has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam.”

According to the 2003 law which outlawed circumcision, those who carry out the practice – or attempt to do so – are liable for imprisonment of up to three years and fines ranging from 40 to 400 dollars. In the event that a girl dies as a result of circumcision, the person who carried out the procedure will receive a prison term of 10 to 20 years – as will those who assisted them.

However, the effects of these penalties have yet to be felt.

“The law is not enforced because to enforce it, you have to first see it (mutilation) happening; people have to inform on the circumcisor and she has to be caught in the act,” says Amadou.

In July 2003, an African Union (AU) summit held in Mozambique adopted a protocol calling for genital mutilation to be banned across the continent.

However, the ‘Maputo Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa’ must be ratified by at least 15 of the AU’s 53 states before it can enter into force. As of early February this year, 10 countries were reported to have endorsed the measure.

Excerpt:

By Ousseini Issa
NIAMEY, Feb 9 2005 (IPS)

There’s no doubting that authorities in Niger have a host of problems to grapple with. United Nations estimates put the number of people living beneath the poverty line in this country in the region of 60 percent – while life expectancy stands at about 46 years.

But, as pressing as the need to improve living standards is, some fear it is preventing government from tackling another important matter: the looting of archaeological treasures.

“The country’s authorities are confronted daily with many other development problems such as basic education and public health which prevent them from getting too involved with the protection of art objects,” says a sociologist in Niger who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The threat which archaeological theft poses to Niger’s heritage was thrown into sharp relief last month, when customs officials at Roissy Airport in Paris intercepted the illegal shipment of about 850 artifacts from Niger.

French officials have promised to return the items, which include rare dinosaur bone specimens, as soon as they have been assessed.

An additional 5,620 archaeological artifacts are also awaiting their return to Niger from France. These objects – prehistoric arrowheads and carved stone pieces, amongst others – were seized from a Malian trafficker at a Paris airport in March 2004. Officials in Niger say efforts are also underway to ensure a local trial for the accused.

“The case is being investigated in France and the objects will certainly be returned to Niger. At the national level here, Niger’s government filed a complaint with the criminal investigation unit to extradite the trafficker to Niger to be prosecuted,” says Ali Bida, the official in charge of museums and the preservation of Niger’s heritage.

A law passed in June 1997 imposed fines of up to 16,000 dollars, and prison terms from one month to two years, for those who engage in theft of artifacts and related offences. However, authorities lack the means to enforce these penalties.

“This inability is a result of the technical services’ lack of material and human resources in relation to how vast this country is. Niger covers an expanse of 1,267,000 square kilometres,” says Bida.

Boube Adamou, an archaeologist with the Niamey-based Institute of Social Science Research, agrees.

“Every known archaeological site is at risk of being looted. In Boura, for example, out of the hundreds of sites I was able to inspect, only one is properly protected,” he told IPS.

The village of Boura, located about 200 kilometres west of the capital, is famous for its important archaeological sites. Two well-known terracotta statues called ‘The Horsemen of Boura’ were discovered in 1985 at one of these sites, which is thought to have been inhabited between 1300 and 200 B.C.

Experts say the statues are archaeologically important because they have, amongst other things, thrown new light on the way in which the African continent is thought to have become populated. The monetary value of the larger of the two figures is put at about 120,000 dollars.

Even when police do manage to catch art thieves, the results of these investigations may be less than satisfactory. Take the case in which a haul of artifacts was intercepted about seven years ago, at the airport in Niamey.

“Twenty-five statuettes with a value of more than 4.5 million CFA francs (about 9,000 dollars) were seized from an individual in 1998 at Niamey airport,” Mamdou Kelessi, the curator at the National Museum of Niamey, told IPS.

“Nevertheless, these statuettes mysteriously and unfortunately disappeared. As for the individual, he was let go after only a few months in prison,” Kelessi added. “The failure to respect the law penalizes all sectors in Niger. That has created a culture of impunity in the country.”

For Adamou, poverty and ignorance pose the greatest threats to safeguarding Niger’s archaeological heritage.

“It is the rural people living near the sites who steal artefacts and sell them. Their clients are art dealers, or sometimes tourists who are passing through,” he says.

Lawan Amadou Arafat, a dealer who operates from a Niamey hotel, confirms Amadou’s claims – apparently with little fear that his statements could land him in hot water with authorities.

“We have suppliers (of artefacts) in different parts of the country,” he notes. “When they find these objects, they bring them to Niamey to offer them to us. Often, we give them orders for specific items.”

Adamou says profits from the sale of artefacts have increased dramatically in recent years. While looters were able to earn between five cents and 1.5 dollars for their discoveries during the 1990s, prices now vary between 70 and 400 dollars. Elsewhere in the region, artefacts can command more than 1,000 dollars.

These increases have been matched by growing sophistication on the part of thieves.

“To begin with, rural communities had no knowledge of which objects were of greater importance. Over time, however, they have gradually become aware that people who buy the artefacts make a profit from those which are of a certain type – or are older,” says Adamou.

In the face of threats to Niger’s heritage, archaeologists are trying to educate communities about the importance of safeguarding artefacts to educate children about their country’s history – and to maintain the tourist trade.

Efforts are also being made to raise awareness amongst law enforcement officials.

“We have organised several sessions to educate the defence and security forces…about the traffic in cultural objects,” says Bida. “Several sessions were held between 1996 and 2003 on the importance of archaeological finds and how to identify them."

Excerpt:

By Ousseini Issa
NIAMEY, Nov 23 2004 (IPS)

When poverty and traditional practices collide in Niger, the results can be ruinous – particularly for teenage girls.

Cultural norms dictate that girls should get married early in this West African country: according to various surveys, the average age for marriage amongst females in Niger is 13. As a result, many find themselves giving birth before they have properly left childhood behind themselves. First pregnancies usually occur before the age of 19.

But when children give birth to children, complications ensue – not least those created by obstetric fistulas.

As IPS has previously reported, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and various non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have launched initiatives in Niger to care for girls and women who develop fistulas.

But, what of the men who allow this condition to persist by marrying girls who are too young? If prevention is better than cure, are efforts underway to alter their perceptions about the age at which is it acceptable for girls to be married?

The answer to these questions may lie with men like Mamoudou Seybou. With his daughter, Sakina, hospitalised with fistula, Seybou’s face clouds with bitterness at the mere mention of the word.

“Sakina had complications during the birth of her first child and became incontinent. Since she took some time to recover, her husband ultimately abandoned her to her fate,” he told IPS.

“I decided to marry her off very early for fear that she might get pregnant out of wedlock, which is common these days. I thought it was for her own good. But I realised too late that I ruined her life. I feel responsible for what happened to Sakina and I don’t wish this kind of tragedy on any parent,” he adds.

As a result of this experience, Seybou – who lives in Torodi, some 50 kilometres from the capital, Niamey – has joined in the fight to eliminate obstetric fistulas in Niger.

The condition occurs as a result of prolonged obstructed labour, often when a girl’s body is too immature – her pelvis too small – to accommodate the baby as it passes through the birth canal. Labour may also become problematic when a child is too big, or badly positioned for birth.

Obstructed labour cuts off the supply of blood to parts of the vagina, bladder and sometimes also the rectum, causing the tissue there to die and rot away. A hole later forms in this area that allows for the uncontrolled flow of urine and fecal matter.

The resultant mess and stench may lead to the girl being abandoned by her husband, and ostracized by other members of society. As fistula sometimes leads to infertility, women who live in communities that frown on childlessness may find themselves further isolated.

While the condition can be repaired with a relatively simple operation, this surgery is normally too costly for the girls and women from poor areas who typically develop fistulas. Statistics on the number of fistulas in Niger can be difficult to come by; but, the UNFPA estimates that more than two million people around the world suffer from the condition.

In wealthy countries, the use of caesarian sections has largely eradicated fistulas. However in Niger, where just four percent of girls and women have access to this procedure, preventive surgery doesn’t hold out much hope. Once again, the urgency of modernizing perceptions about the role of women in society becomes apparent.

A number of groups in the country are targeting men in campaigns to rid Niger of fistulas.

One of these initiatives dates back to January 2002, when a National Forum on Early Marriage in Niger was held in Maradi, a city located about 600 kilometres east of Niamey, by the Association of Traditional Chiefs of Niger (Association des chefs traditionnels du Niger, ACTN). The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) provided assistance for this gathering.

“At the end of the forum, we decided to conduct an information campaign in all our villages, calling upon the services of those who traditionally broadcast our messages, who include…marabouts, griots, blacksmiths, hairdressers and butchers,” Amirou Alhassane Albadé, assistant general secretary of the ACTN, told IPS. (A “griot” is a traditional storyteller in West Africa, while a “marabout” is an Islamic religious figure.)

UNICEF-trained workers also assist chiefs in spreading the word about the dangers of fistula. In certain instances at least, it appears the message is taking hold.

“It’s poverty and ignorance which move us to marry off our daughters too early. But as we now understand the risks such practices expose them to, we can no longer allow ourselves to sign away their futures,” a father from Libore, a village just outside Niamey, told IPS.

Another man, Issoufou Boube, was interviewed at the recently-opened Reception Centre for Women with Fistulas in Niamey, where his wife was a patient.

“I felt at least partly responsible for my wife’s fistula. I should not have agreed to live with her before she came of age,” he told IPS. “But you know that in our society, it’s hard to marry and then leave your wife with her parents. They consider her a useless burden as soon as she has a husband.”

Campaigns to prevent early marriage also tend to encourage parents to enroll and keep their daughters in school – something that has incalculable benefits for the girls, the families they go on to have, and society at large.

But, there’s still some way to go in improving girls’ education. According to the Minister of Education, the nationwide rate of primary school enrollment in 2003 was 50.1 percent for boys and 33.3 percent for girls.

In addition, there are few rural schools where girls can pursue secondary education in Niger.

“Girls become vulnerable when they leave their villages for urban areas, to attend secondary schools. Generally, they stay with tutors who don’t always take good care of them,” says Albadé.

“It’s for this reason that certain parents end the schooling of their daughters at secondary level,” he adds.

Religion may also prove an obstacle in convincing people that early marriage isn’t the best choice for girls.

“Obstructive Islamic leaders continue to exercise a bad influence over communities, in the name of religion,” says Moussa Abdou, secretary-general of Reproductive Health for Motherhood Without Risk, a Niamey-based NGO. (Ninety percent of Niger’s population is Muslim).

Islamic specialist Boureïma Daouda says those leaders who do so are misinformed.

“Despite what some say, Islam does not encourage early marriage…Neither does it recommend marriage to girls before they have reached puberty,” he told IPS.

“However, if a girl who has not reached puberty is married according to the customs of Islam, that marriage is valid. The parents must decide when the union should be consummated,” he added.

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By Ousseini Issa
NIAMEY, Oct 20 2004 (IPS)

The competition between energy and environmental needs in Niger has taken centre stage of late, with authorities seeking to promote the use of coal in a bid to halt deforestation in the North African country.

“Wood is the primary fuel source in Niger, and is used for 95 percent of all energy needs. (However) it clearly plays an important role in sustaining the environment,” Oumarou Hammadou, permanent secretary of Niger’s Ministry of Energy and Mines, said recently.

The Sahel region, which stretches through Niger across the width of the continent, marks the transition between the Sahara desert and the equatorial area. For several years, concerns have been expressed about the Sahara’s encroachment onto the Sahal – a trend partially ascribed to overgrazing and deforestation.

According to Issaka Mallam Garba, director of energy and mines for the Niamey region, the country consumes about two billion kilograms of firewood annually, of which more than 100 million kilograms are used by large institutions. Niamey is the capital of Niger.

Says Hammadou, “If we don’t take steps now, we will be short three million tons (three billion kilograms) of firewood in 2010, or 2.5 times the present sustainable supply, and our forests will disappear.”

As part of their campaign to get Nigeriens to switch to coal, authorities are preaching the benefits of this energy source to a wide variety of groups and organisations.

State agencies, civil and professional organisations and entrepreneurs are all being lobbied to use coal. Authorities also want households to become more efficient in their consumption of energy resources.

Key to the government’s campaign is increased production by the Nigerien Coal Company (Société nigérienne de charbon, SONICHAR) which extracts coal from mines in the central Agadez region.

“Besides the things we’ve already done, there’s the relaunching (of SONICHAR’s) 3,000 metric-ton-a-year (three million kilograms) production unit at Anou-Araren, the distribution of more than 300 tons (300,000 kilograms) of coal in the metropolitan Niamey area, and the production of 3,800 coal-burning stoves designed for collective and individual use in households,” Hammadou told IPS.

Special points of sale for hospitals and other large institutions are envisaged to ensure that they are provided with enough coal to function smoothly. In the short term, relatively few households will be affected by the move from wood to coal – although officials hope that the overall use of wood will be substantially reduced.

“These information campaigns by the government are intended to get us to replace 25 percent of our firewood with coal, but only two percent of urban households will be affected,” Mallam Garba told IPS.

Niger would require about 600 million kilograms of coal a year were all households to start using this energy source, he adds.

“SONICHAR has the capacity to produce 300,000 tons (300 million kilograms) of raw coal a year,” Mohamed Haidara, a senior official in the company, said in an interview IPS.

“Until now it has transformed part of this amount into electric power which feeds the plants in the Agadez region and its surroundings, which need only 160,000 to 170,000 tons (160 million to 170 million kilograms) a year,” he said, adding that the use of surplus coal for domestic energy uses would allow SONICHAR to “substantially reduce its losses.”

Plans are underway to increase SONICHAR’s production to 33 million kilograms by the end of the year.

Those households which do start using coal may find it more cost effective than wood.

“Coal is more economical than wood. With a 40-kilo bag, I can cook for practically three weeks, while with firewood I would spend at least 5,000 CFA francs (over nine dollars) each week,” Fati Abdou, a restaurateur in Niamey, told IPS.

“The only thing about coal which puts people off is the fact that it’s hard to light if you don’t know how. But once you’ve got it lit, it stays lit for the entire day,” she added.

According to organisers of the wood-to-coal campaign, a 40-kilogram bag of coal costs about 7.5 dollars – and a coal stove just under four dollars (government is subsidizing the cost of these stoves).

A 40-kilogram bag of coal is said to be sufficient to cover the energy needs of a family of 10 for a month or more, whereas about 150 kilograms of wood would be required for such a household over a similar period.

Officials have arranged for blacksmiths to be trained in the production of coal stoves – and have held cooking classes to show families how to use them. The campaign has even received an endorsement from the National Association of Wood Users.

“Recourse to coal as a source of domestic energy is a healthy initiative, in the sense that it will allow us to save our forests from altogether disappearing,” says Elhadj Dodo Mahaman Abdou, president of the association.

He adds that his association “is prepared to help government in this laudable enterprise by being responsible for investing in and selling (coal) in markets."

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By Ousseini Issa
NIAMEY, Aug 26 2004 (IPS)

Zeinabou Baba had just about given up on the prospect of living a normal life by the time aid workers arrived in her village of Tera, west of Niger’s capital û Niamey.

Married at the age 16, Baba had experienced four pregnancies that resulted in stillbirths – and the development of a condition known as obstetric fistula.

This disability can occur if a woman’s pelvis is too small to allow for delivery of a child (or if the baby is badly positioned at the time of birth, or its head too big). This leads to obstructed labour that may continue for days, causing extensive damage to the woman’s birth canal that makes her become incontinent. Fistula typically affects poor, young women who do not have access to û or cannot afford û the caesarean procedure that would allow them to avoid this disability.

The unrestricted flow of urine and fecal matter create an odour that often lead to women with fistulas being socially ostracized. In Baba’s case, she was rejected by her husband û and had to return home to her parents. Fistula may also result in nerve damage to a woman’s legs that makes walking difficult.

Matters changed, however, when a team from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) arrived in Baba’s village, offering assistance to women with fistulas. The team arranged for her to visit the National Hospital of Niamey, where she underwent surgery to treat the condition.

Baba eventually returned to her village in 2002, to start a small business with seed capital from the Support Fund Against Poverty (Fonds d’appui à la lutte contre la pauvreté, FALP) û which assists Niger officials and civil society in the fight against poverty.

According to official statistics, Niger has the highest fertility rate in sub-Saharan Africa: on average, women have eight children each. But, it’s unclear how many of them suffer from fistulas.

– There is no exact figure on the number of women with fistulas in Niger, but there must be many since all the factors which correlate with the appearance of fistulas are present,” Nathalie Maulet, a technical advisor on gender issues at the UNFPA office in Niamey, told IPS.

These factors include early marriage, which is very common in rural areas; the continuing practice of female genital mutilation û and a general lack of reproductive health care. Only 30 percent of women in Niger have access to prenatal care, and just 17 percent are assisted in childbirth. Four percent have access to caesareans in the event of complications during the birth.

Poverty and a 91 percent illiteracy rate amongst women also create an enabling environment for fistulas, says Maulet. According to the UN Development Programme’s Human Development Report for 2004, about 61 percent of Niger’s citizens live below the poverty line of a dollar a day.

In recent years, however, fistulas have received greater attention in Niger. Government has joined forces with private health groups to ensure that women who have this condition receive the surgery required to treat it.

ôThese operations are helping to ease congestion in the National Hospital of Niamey. (Previously) many women who needed treatment û some of whom had been waiting for a long time û had taken to living in the hospital,” Kassoum Sanoussi, a surgeon, told IPS.

Bibata Salou, a fistula sufferer from Karma, a village near Niamey, was one of those for whom the hospital became home.

ôI lived in the hospital in Niamey for five years. Only recently was I able to get treatment,” she told IPS.

Adds Salou’s mother, ôAt first, her sister would help her. But as the possibility of treatment lagged, her sister finally returned to her village, leaving Bibata alone in the hospital.”

ôTo us, it was an impossibility that she would ever get better; we were in total despair.”

A fistula eradication network made up of twelve organisations was created in October 2003. ôThis network, which is chaired by the Ministry of Health, aims to end the duplication of effort we’ve seen on the ground regarding operations,” Maulet says.

Reproductive Health for Motherhood Without Risk (DIMOL), a non- governmental organisation based in Niamey, is one of the groups that is involved in the campaign to care for women afflicted with fistulas. More than a hundred women have received medical and social treatment under the initiative.

ôThis operation was made possible by a donation of about 42 million CFA francs (almost 80,000 dollars) from the Canadian Embassy in Niger, through the Support Fund Against Poverty,” Hadiza Abdou, coordinator of the FALP project, told IPS.

According to Ali Amadou, DIMOL’s project manager, ôAmong the women who are cured, 97 have been reintegrated into their communities with 25,000 CFA francs (almost 50 dollars) each worth of seed moneyàThe purpose of the money is to help them start a small business.”

In addition, an appeal has been issued to foreign specialists to come to Niger periodically and perform fistula correction surgeries.

ôIn February 2004, we brought in Professor Kees Waaldijk, a specialist in vesico-vaginal fistulas, to the hospital in Katsina (Nigeria),” says Amadou.

ôHe’s operated on about thirty women, and taught his technique to about forty doctors, surgeons, obstetrician-gyneacologists and anesthetists û as well as students from Niger and Mali,” he adds.

The UNFPA plans to send more health workers for training with Waaldjik in Nigeria, which neighbors Niger.

ôWe hope, with help from the Ministry of Health, to send a complete team, composed of a physician, an anesthetist and two nurses for six weeks of training with Professor Waaldijk,” notes Maulet.

ôThe UNPF granted 40,000 dollars in financial support in 2003 to Niger, as part of the fistula eradication program. During the same year, the country also received a four-year grant for 300,000 dollars from the (United States-based) Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through the UNFPA,” she adds.

Excerpt:

By Ousseini Issa
NIAMEY, Aug 3 2004 (IPS)

The year 1980 proved to be a turning point for Niger, marked as it was by a slump in the sale of uranium, the country’s main export commodity. Since then, Niger has experienced a series of economic crises aggravated by drought – causing poverty in rural and urban areas to deepen.

“The majority of families who live in this district, for example, continue to live in a precarious economic situation, without any assistance,” Hassoumi Saley, a resident of Koira Tegui – a small town near the capital, Niamey – told IPS.

Adds Daouda Ali, a community leader, “We have no modern infrastructure in this neighborhood…We only have one health centre and one borehole, which doesn’t meet our water needs.”

According to Amadou Ibrahim, an economist at the World Bank’s office in Niamey, Niger’s leaders have recognised the need to make the country’s economy less dependent on uranium. However, this recognition was never translated into action.

“Leaders were not just banking on uranium. In their speeches, agriculture and livestock were presented as the lifeblood of Niger’s economy. Unfortunately, there has never been clear economic policy on these two sectors,” Ibrahim said in an interview with IPS.

“No one has ever tried to develop specific industries around cotton or peanuts, for example, or develop a dynamic private sector,” he added. “The consequence has been that with the decline of the uranium market, the country’s export receipts have gone down considerably.”

According to the United Nations Development Programme, 63 percent of Niger’s citizens live below the poverty line of a dollar a day. Food insecurity and a lack of proper housing pose acute problems.

In response to this situation, government – in association with donors – adopted a poverty reduction strategy in January 2002. The programme aims to encourage sustainable economic growth through developing agriculture and other sectors, and to ensure that basic social services are provided to the population. It also promotes good governance.

In addition, the strategy includes a special, presidential initiative for building 1,000 new classrooms, 1,000 clinics and several dams and water points. The initiative also deals with job creation.

“This special program began in 2001 and is financed by the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC). Its aim is to improve rural production, increase health services, school enrollment – and the availability of potable water for both humans and livestock,” Malla Ari, coordinator of the poverty reduction strategy, told IPS.

HIPC was developed by the World Bank to allow poor countries to reduce their external debt, so as to implement poverty reduction programmes. The first phase of the presidential initiative cost about 34.6 million dollars.

“Through this programme, the rate of primary school enrollment went from 37 percent in 2000 to 41.5 percent in 2002…(It) was instrumental in creating several hundred permanent and temporary jobs, thus reducing unemployment,” says Ari. The new jobs were largely in the education, agriculture and fishing sectors.

“The district of Ouallam greatly benefited from the special programme. In the area of education, for example, the rate of school enrollment in 2000 was about 22 percent. Today, it’s 59 percent,” adds Djibo Attinine, assistant chief of police in the south-western district, which is considered one of the poorest in the country.

“As far as health care goes, the rate was about 25 percent. Now it’s 50 percent,” he told IPS.

However, government’s poverty reduction efforts have not elicited glowing praise from all quarters.

“The target communities for these projects are not always involved in the way they’re carried out, which means that water access points were constructed in places where a school was more necessary – or a clinic,” says Adamou Abdou, project coordinator for Socioeconomic Activity Support for Rural Women, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) based in Niamey.

These words are echoed by a resident of Ouallam: “What’s the use of a clinic building or a school building when you have no way to make it function? That’s the sad reality here, where much of the infrastructure built as part of this programme has never been put into operation.”

Even government officials agree that certain projects lacked the appropriate level of forethought and planning.

“Local people were not involved in the way the programme operated, which created this situation…Certain infrastructure was built without trying to find out if it really corresponded to the needs of the beneficiaries,” says Bagoudou Mossi, director of administrative and financial affairs at the Ministry of Planning.

“To get abandoned works – like classrooms and clinics, for example – into service, the government is presently trying to provide them with operating expenses and personnel,” he adds.

These difficulties have led Mamane Sani Adamou – a representative of the NGO, Alternative Citizen Space – to describe government’s poverty relief efforts as little more than a public relations exercise.

“Niger’s HIPC funds, for example, are only 42 billion CFA francs (almost 81 million dollars) officially, over three years,” Adamou told IPS. But, “The scope of poverty in Niger is such that you’d need several tens of billions of francs per year to be able, by 2015, to reduce this scourge by half.”

The international community has set 2015 as the deadline for reaching eight Milliennium Development Goals. These goals were agreed on by member states of the UN in 2000, in a bid to improve education and health in developing nations, amongst other things – and to reduce poverty.

For their part, donors and aid agencies appear satisfied with Niger’s fight against poverty. In May this year, the Paris Club of creditor nations annulled all debts owed by Niger (a sum of 104 million dollars) in order to support the country’s efforts.

According to the World Bank’s Ibrahim, “This debt reduction corresponds to about 5.42 percent of all Niger’s debt, which at the end of December 2003 amounted to 995.4 billion CFA francs (about 1.9 billion dollars).”

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