Niger’s president played down the food crisis ravaging his desert nation, saying that people in the impoverished West African country ”look well-fed”.
In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), President Mamadou Tandja acknowledged that a devastating locust invasion last year and poor rains had produced food shortages, but he said that was not unusual for his country — or for the entire Sahel region, a semi-desert scrubland that straddles the southern edge of the Sahara desert.
”We are experiencing like all the countries in the Sahel a food crisis due to the poor harvest and the locust attacks of 2004,” Tandja told the BBC on Tuesday.
”The people of Niger look well-fed, as you can see,” he said.
TV networks have for weeks broadcast images of severely malnourished, skeletal children in Niger, many too weak to brush flies from their faces. Scores have died.
The United Nations says the combined effects of drought and crop-destroying locusts have left about 3,6-million people here facing severe food shortages.
Children are most at risk, with some 800 000 under the age of five who need to be fed urgently, the United Nations says.
Tandja said the reports of famine were ”false propaganda” that had been used by the United Nations, aid agencies and opposition parties for political and economic gain.
”It is only by deception that such agencies receive funding,” Tandja said.
The United Nations and aid groups have appealed for millions of dollars in aid.
Tandja said $45-million (â,¬36-million, R287-million) had been promised to Niger, but only $2,5 million (â,¬2 million, R16-million) had been received.
Tandja also said his government had subsidised food prices since last year in an effort to ease the crisis. ‒ Sapa-AP