Niger food crisis worse than 2005, say UN
Niger’s food crisis
is already worse than the last emergency in 2005 but the West African
nation is better prepared to face it, in part due to better government
cooperation, the U.N. aid chief said.
John Holmes was
speaking on Wednesday at the end of a trip to uranium-producing Niger,
where at least 7.8 million people, or nearly 60 percent of the
population, will be threatened with severe food shortages this year.
“My impression is
that (the food crisis) is worse but the good thing is that the alarm is
sounded earlier and we are better prepared than in 2005,” Mr. Holmes
told Reuters.
In 2005, President
Mamadou Tandja played down the significance of the crisis until media
reporting on the scale of the hunger made his position untenable.
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