The Sahel region of West Africa is the area below the Sahara Desert. It is an area that is known to be dry and arid.

There are currently 15 million people in Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, Senegal the Gambia, Mauritania, northern Nigeria and northern Cameroon who are touched by a growing food crisis in the region.

This region is known to suffer from long periods without rain, which makes the rainy season crucial for crops to grow.

Why is this happening?

When the rains don’t come, the crops fail, leaving little or no food for small-scale farmers and their families, who make up the majority of the population.

In the past, farmers could keep their surplus stocks in reserve or sell them on the market to make some money to purchase food, which helped communities cope with periods of drought.

With climate change, however, rains are becoming either too infrequent or too abundant, which ruins crops year after year. As a consequence, farmers and their families are becoming more vulnerable to droughts because they hardly have any reserves to put away.

This season brought another poor rainy season, which has made 15.6 million people vulnerable to food shortages, including one million children who are facing issues of acute malnutrition.

“When I am really hungry, it hurts my stomach, and then it ends up giving me a headache. When I’m hungry, I don’t have any concentration. I can’t even hear what the teachers are saying.”

Because of the disastrous harvest in 2011, Halarou’s mother and father have left his village to find work so that they can send money home. Halarou is living with his grandmother. With seven months to go until the next harvest, the family’s food stores are empty.

Halarou’s story

There are other factors that are making this situation even worse. The Sahel includes some of the poorest countries in the world, yet the cost of food staples has increased by 25% in six months. This has made food unaffordable for many families.

There is also political unrest and conflict in Mali, which has caused thousands of people to flee their homes and become refugees in other countries.

The suffering of people will only get worse if communities are not given support to cope and recover from this crisis, and develop ways to prevent future crises.

What can be done?

People not only need access to food, but help to find ways to retain their livelihoods, support to adapt to the changing climate, and efforts to restore peace and security. It is only under these circumstances that real change can happen.

DEVELOPMENT AND PEACE is supporting local organizations in their efforts to prevent a major humanitarian crisis. This means not only distributing food and providing medical aid, but also supporting communities with projects that provide people with work, help with the building of infrastructure in their villages and engage local people in the development of their communities.

To do this, DEVELOPMENT AND PEACE is working with local members of the Caritas Internationalis federation, a network of 164 Catholic development and humanitarian relief organizations, and the second largest network of this kind in the world. Although the Catholic community is small in West Africa, it is committed to helping all those affected by this crisis.

Pope Benedict XVI has called on Catholics around the world to act in solidarity with the people of the Sahel:

“The Sahel was seriously threatened again in recent months by a notable decrease in food resources. I urge the international community to seriously address the extreme poverty of these people whose conditions are deteriorating.”

A call for solidarity

"Life in many poor countries is still extremely insecure as a consequence of food shortages, and the situation could become worse: hunger still reaps enormous numbers of victims among those who, like Lazarus, are not permitted to take their place at the rich man's table, contrary to the hopes expressed by Paul VI.

Feed the hungry (cf. Mt 25: 35, 37, 42) is an ethical imperative for the universal Church, as she responds to the teachings of her Founder, the Lord Jesus, concerning solidarity and the sharing of goods. Moreover, the elimination of world hunger has also, in the global era, become a requirement for safeguarding the peace and stability of the planet.”

Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate

An act of faith

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Photos courtesy of Caritas Internationalis