Nomad children in Niger eating their way to success. Education gives the children a chance to escape the poverty cycle. Educated girls get married later and have fewer children while educated parents want their children to go to school. Mariama (left) is a shy twelve-year-old who dreams of becoming a teacher one day. She really appreciates the meal she just finished as her favourite food is rice with sauce. Most people in Niger eat a cereal with sauce every day. [Photo: WFP/Schuler]

Niger is classified as both a least developed and a low-income, food-deficit country, and was ranked last in the UNDP Human Development Index in 2006 for the second year running.  Niger has malnutrition rates in line with those seen in conflict situations, with 10 percent of the children under five suffering from acute malnutrition and 50 percent of the children - more than one million - suffering from chronic malnutrition.  Social indicators are also low: life expectancy at birth is only 44.7 years and the child mortality rate is 20 percent, suggesting that one in five children will never reach the age of five.  Poor school attendance, especially among girls, contributes to Niger's 71 percent illiteracy rate.

The country has an estimated population of 12.6 million, which is largely concentrated in a narrow band of arable land along its southern border.  Rural subsistence agriculture and livestock raising dominate the economy.  The country suffers from chronic food insecurity during the lean season before the harvest, a situation that is exacerbated by the frequent onset of natural disasters.  The population growth of 3.3 percent per year is one of the highest in the world, with the country's population and its food needs doubling every 20 years. 

Click here to download the full 2006 CERF report for Niger.

In early 2006, the country was still recovering from the shock of the 2005 food crisis, which had weakened livelihood systems of a large part of the rural population and had caused severe nutritional problems in children.  While the 2005 harvest was relatively good, many households’ debt could barely be covered by the harvest received. 

Many households were forced to sell assets, animals, harvested food and land to survive the 2005 lean season.  Some areas received little or no harvest in late 2005.

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF)/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) nutritional survey of October/November 2005 indicated that rates of global acute malnutrition surpassed the “critical” threshold with a national average of 15.3 percent.

In March 2006, World Food Programme (WFP) requested $5.5 million in CERF funds for the immediate purchase of commodities for malnourished children as well as food insecure families before the onset of the 2006 lean season.

The CERF funds were used to procure 3,611 metric ton of corn-soya blend, 280 metric ton of sugar and 209 metric ton of vegetable oil for nutritional activities as well as 3,403 metric ton of sorghum for targeted free food distributions.

For nutritional activities, these commodities were distributed as supplementary feeding for malnourished children as well as for the blanket supplementary feeding activity as described above.  In 2006, WFP also provided a protection ration for the families of malnourished children in outpatient treatment to ensure that the treatment ration for the malnourished child was not shared with other children in the household.  A discharge ration, which provides food for the family of the child upon recovery and discharge from treatment, was also implemented in 2006 and was found to be effective in shortening recovery times of children in treatment as well as reducing the rate of re-admission.  Through these nutritional activities, 4,383 metric tons were distributed to 259,141 beneficiaries.

Through the targeted free food distributions, 3,120 metric tons were distributed to 183,281 beneficiaries.

[Last Update: 13 September 2007]

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Click here to download the 2006 CERF report for Niger

Click here for CERF in Niger 2007