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Misanet.com / IRIN, 30 May - Niger's government hopes to be able to provide its most vulnerable populations with enough low-cost cereals to tide them over until the first cereal harvests in August, state officials said on Tuesday. Nafoga Adamou, coordinator of the Early Warning Unit at Niger's Systeme d'Alerte Precoce/Gestion des Crises (Early Warning/Crisis Management System), told IRIN that food donations and purchases by the state amounted to some 24,000 mt. The biggest donors, he said, have included Nigeria (7,500 mt) and the European Union/French Cooperation (4,500 mt), while help has also been received from Algeria, China, Egypt, FAO, Luxembourg, Libya and WFP. The cereals, mainly millet and sorghum, are sold at 10,000 francs CFA (about US$ 14) per 100-kg bag instead of the usual price of 18,000 to 20,000 francs CFA. Aid has also come from the Japanese government, which signed a memorandum of understanding on Friday with Niger for 300 million yen (about US$ 2.5 million) to buy rice from Japan, Satoshi Ikoma, the third secretary of the Japanese Embassy in Abidjan, told IRIN. In April, the state had appealed for 60,000 mt to cover a shortfall of 163,000 mt in the 2000 agricultural season. The deficit was caused by poor harvests brought on by insufficient rain. The Foreign Ministry reported in April that about 40 percent of Niger's 10,094 villages had food deficits of over 50 percent and that the affected area had nearly 3.6 million inhabitants or 35 percent of the country's population. In a bid to secure the next harvest, some 543 mt of millet and sorghum seeds are to be distributed under a programme financed by the European Union (EU) to the sum of 200 million FCFA (just under US$ 300,000), according to Bakari Seidou, coordinator of the Cellule crise alimentaire (CCA - Food crisis unit). The seeds, which will be treated with fungicide to make sure they are not eaten, will be distributed to some 713,643 people in villages where the food deficit has been 85 percent or higher. The amounts departments are to get also depend on the contribution they usually make to the national cereal output, according to Seidou. Some 191 mt will go to the southern department of Zinder, which usually accounts for about 30 percent of local cereal production. Another key cereal producer, Tilabery, will receive 117 mt, Seidou said. The other departments where the seeds will be distributed are Maradi (96 mt), Tahoua (49 mt), Dosso (62 mt) and Diffa(28 mt). Seidou said his unit functions as the secretariat of a mixed commission linking Niger and its donors that monitors the food security situation in the semi-arid country. It has at its disposal three instruments whose use depends on the magnitude of the food crisis facing the country. A national security stock that now stands at 12,500 mt as against a target of 40,000 mt can be used only when there is a major food crisis. It is complemented by a food security fund which should have enough money to pay for 40,000 mt of cereals and now has the equivalent of about US$ 1.4 million. The third instrument is a common donor fund used each year to finance small projects. This year the 'Fonds commun de donateurs' has earmarked about US$ 1.2 million for 67 projects falling under three categories: the creation of small cereal banks; land recovery, and animal feed banks.
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