Africa Daily via AFP: More than 2.5 million people in Niger are suffering from food insecurity because of a shortfall in the cereal harvest due to bad weather and crop pests, the agriculture minister said Saturday."A survey conducted since December 2014 indicated that 15.7 percent of the population, or 2,588,128 people, are in a situation of food insecurity, including 410,297 in severe insecurity," Maidagi Allambeye told MPs. The situation has been aggravated by the presence of some 200,000 refugees who had fled attacks by Boko Haram and other militants.
Food insecurity in the poor Sahel country, which is plagued by recurring food crises, is linked to a cereal deficit of more than 230,000 tonnes at the end of the 2014 crop year, he explained. The government attributed the shortfall to drought, floods and caterpillar attacks.
"We cannot say that Niger is suffering chronic insecurity but this is still very common," said Vigno Hounkanli, a spokesman for the World Food Programme in Niamey, which has helped some 480,000 people since June...
Locator map of Niger by Vardion, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license
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