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Misanet.com / IPS, 1 February - More than a million people in the central and eastern regions of Chad are starving because of a drought, but the government does not have enough food to alleviate their hunger. The Agriculture Ministry says emergency food stockpiles are running low - only 1,350 tons of sorghum remains - but the country needs an estimated 15,000 metric tons of grain to feed the hungry. - The food situation is critical in much of the country, acknowledged Mahamat Saleh Annadif, Chad's Interior Minister, to an audience of western ambassadors and representatives from international aid organisations. "We need help as quickly as possible," he pleaded. At the moment, France is the only country to have provided funds to buy grain. Its money will purchase 1,600 tons of grain. "Cereal production for the 2000-2001 growing year has been mediocre. The entire country is estimated to have produced only 890,312 tons, as opposed to the 1,229,797 produced last year. That is a 28 percent gap, or a net deficit of
SECADEV has recommended that the government purchase 15,000 tons of grain, which would cost an estimated 2.5 billion CFA francs. But the government has announced it has only 1.5 billion francs available. Politicians, especially opponents of President Idriss Deby's regime, have begun apportioning blame for the drought and the famine. Yorongar Ngarlejy, opposition leader, places the fault squarely on the shoulders of the president and his cabinet. "Knowing full well that this year's rains would not be enough for a good harvest, and that many Chadians living in the Sahel would be at risk for food shortages, the Deby regime, on its own initiative, decided to take surplus petroleum revenues and buy weapons and cars instead." Yorongar was alluding to the fact that the government recently purchased weapons with which to fight off rebel guerrilla leader Youssouf Togoimi, who is trying to destabilise the Ndjamena regime. The money spent for the weapons came from unexpected petroleum revenues from a controversial Cameroon-Chad pipeline construction project. - It's scandalous to spend three billion CFA francs on weapons and then go crying to the international community about the poor starving Chadians, chided Ngaramadji Gabriel, another legislator. When Parliament tried to challenge him on the issue, the country's prime minister, Nagoum Yamasoum, retorted, "The country's institutions are being threatened by Youssouf Togoimi's rebel movement. It's a national emergency. Don't worry. We have not by any means forgotten about the famine problem." While waiting for the government to fix the problem, famished residents are streaming out of the affected areas toward southern Chad, where the problems are not so harsh. Those who chose to stay put in the hope that their off-season crops would tide them over found that migrating birds and grasshoppers would eat the remaining shoots. There is already pasture available for livestock, has disappeared some six months before the end of the dry season. Cereal merchants have taken advantage of the disaster to raise prices. A kilogram of sorghum, which used to cost 250 CFA francs in Mongo, a town in central Chad, now costs 350 francs, a prohibitive price for many of the region's impoverished households. In addition, trade between areas where there is a surplus and those where there is a deficit is difficult because the network of roads is so bad. In a country whose surface area is more than one million square kilometres, there are only 400 kilometres of paved road. In eastern Chad, thousands of women and children have been abandoned by their husbands and fathers, who have left for greener pastures. Those left behind have been reduced to scouring the bush for wild grass on which they hope to survive. The toughest of the women are putting everything they've got into growing garlic and onions. The land is free, but growing these vegetables require wells, which the women rent for 15,000 CFA francs a month. Often, they have to do two seedings before anything grows at all. Each woman's plot produces at maximum 20 sacks of onions and 10 sacks of garlic. Local traders buy each sack for 30,000 francs. They then go to market 300 kilometres away and resell the items for double the price. But the women farmers have little choice since they are combating persistent hunger. If they themselves wanted to sell their products elsewhere at better prices, they would need access to transportation, which they do not have. "It looks like the famine is going to be with us for a long time," acknowledged Issa Kana, general inspector for the Ministry of Agriculture. - The Chadian government cannot effectively deal with this catastrophe now that its main export, cotton, has experienced a 20 percent drop in production. That means that small farmers are going to be in the hole for six billion CFA francs, and the government for one billion, the inspector general said. The famine victims' last best hope is for a World Food Programme (WFP) project agreed to by the government two months ago to get underway immediately. Part of the project is a "Work for Food" scheme which is to begin operations in 2001 and run through 2005. The idea is that vulnerable populations will be paid with food for participating in public works projects, such as building dams and irrigation ditches. "The goal of the project is to improve people's abilities to prevent catastrophe," said WFP's outgoing representative in Chad, Mamo Desta. The total cost of the operation is 1.4 billion US dollars. Bagrim Kibassim, the official in charge of the WFP project, noted that "this operation will help dissipate the spectre of famine in Chad in a sustainable way. It will also provide some relief for the Chadian government, which is unable to do very much when disaster strikes because they possess very limited means." Kana is hoping for works projects of Herculean proportions if Chad is to make cyclical famines a thing of the past. "If we increased the amount of arable land and controlled runoff, it would allow us to double or triple yield," he said. "To do that, we would need at least 12 billion CFA francs to reclaim 5.6 million hectares of land," he added. Chadian authorities have not yet made such a plan part of their national priorities. Chad is a landlocked Sahelian country, subject to cyclical droughts and the resultant food shortages. Its problems are made even worse by a per capita gross domestic product of only 230 US dollars per year. Almost 54 percent of its population, estimated at approximately 7 million, lives below the poverty line.
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