At this period of year, the Gadabeji Reserve should be a shelter for the nomadic tribes who migrate across a moonscape on the border of the Sahara in order to graze their cattle. Unfortunately, the grass is so meager that the cattle are too weak to stand and too skinny to be put up for sale, leaving poor people without any chance to buy grain to feed their families.

Thomas Yanga, WFP Regional director for West Africa declared that people had lost crops, and the capacity to cope on their own, and the levels of underfeeding among women and children had already risen to a very high stage and it is by now beyond the danger position.

In Niger, some people say that the growing food crisis could be worse than the one that struck the country in 2005, when aid companies treated tens of thousands of children for famine.

Famine is nothing new to Niger, a previous French colony nearly twice the size of Texas.  The Sahel cuts throughout the middle of the country, serving as the separating line between the sands of Sahara and the green and lush farmlands of neighboring Nigeria to the south. Severe droughts have punctuated the region’s history for centuries.