Drought Affects Millions in The Sahel


NIAMEY—Drought has hit the Sahel region this year just as many families are still in the process of rebuilding their lives, and re-stocking cattle after the last food crisis which struck in 2010.

The annual lean season - when food supplies run low ahead of the next harvest - is approaching, and WFP is pre-positioning food in areas where people are expected to struggle to feed their families.

woman walking across the dried grounds

Wide-scale drought

Late and erratic rains in the Sahel have hurt crops across a huge swathe of territory that includes parts of Niger, Mauritania, Mali, Chad, Senegal, Gambia, Burkina Faso, and northern Nigeria.


Families who were unable to grow enough food to feed themselves this year will be hard pressed to buy food in local markets and levels of food insecurity are already on the rise.



Reaching the hungry

WFP is currently scaling up to reach some 3.3 million people in Niger, 750,000 people in Mali and 400,000 people in Mauritania.

four mauritanian adults on the dried ground

In regions suffering from high rates of malnutrition, that will mean providing small children and their mothers with special food products to protect against the long-term effects of child hunger.

In other areas, it will mean giving their parents' food rations in exchange for work on projects like irrigation ditches, that will help them to weather the strain of droughts in the future.