With Over $1bn In Foreign Aid, Niger Coup Plotter’s May Throw Country Into Famine

When Col Maj Amadou Abdramane grabbed power in a bloodless coup in Niger Republic on Wednesday, July 26 2023, his first move was to warn against foreign interference and close all land and air borders.

What Abdramane and his co-plotters failed to take into account was the over one billion dollars in foreign aid that the country depends on to tackle malnutrition.

In 2022, Niger received no fewer than 1.2 billion naira in foreign aid from the United States, Germany, France, Nigeria, World Bank and European Union.

Volunteers from around the world are also at the forefront of tackling the country’s food insecurity.

Niger’s Budding Food Security Problem

According to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), an estimated 3.4 million Nigeriens are food-insecure and approximately 1.3 million children under five years of age suffer from acute malnutrition.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) recognizes malnutrition as a major threat to children’s health and development in the West African country.

The number of stunted children is expected to increase by 44 per cent by 2025 owing to population growth.

According to UNICEF, stunting, which has consequences for a child’s survival and cognitive development as well as economic development of the country, affects 47.8 per cent of children, similar to the situation in 2006. Micronutrient deficiencies are rampant, and more than 70 per cent of children under 5 are anemic.

More than 47 percent of children under 5 years of age suffer from chronic malnutrition in Niger. According to the United Nations World Food Program’s estimates, more than 1.9 million people in Niger were affected by severe food insecurity in 2020. Another 4.5 million are estimated to be chronically food insecure, and millions more experience periodic food shortages during the lean season.

Niger regularly experiences low and variable rainfalls, land degradation, deforestation, and desertification. Most Nigeriens depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, and frequent droughts in the region often lead to food shortages.

Niger’s exposure to recurrent shocks, including climate shocks, increases its vulnerability to food insecurity. The coup is expected to exacerbate the situation as foreign governments might be reluctant to work with the junta.

The food security crisis in the country is traceable to the difficulties in livestock feeding, watering conditions and fodder deficits. Herd movements are also disrupted due to the security situation.

There was a decline of 39% in cereal production in the 2021-2022 cropping seasons, which is currently recording a gross deficit of two million tons across all regions of Niger.

Food insecurity remains widespread, particularly in areas impacted by armed group activity, where violence and resultant displacement restrict agricultural production and access to markets.

Foreign Aid to the Rescue

The acute shortage of food in the country has been primarily managed by donations and aids from foreign country.

Of the over 200 million dollars the country received from the United States in 2022, more than $110 million (55 percent) was earmarked for emergency food and nutrition assistance. The rest went into basic health, agriculture and maternal & child health.

The European Union has also donated more than 36 million euros to the West African country, through the World Food Programme (WFP).

In 2022, close to 70 percent of WFP’s emergency food assistance in Niger was delivered via cash to help vulnerable families and individuals combat hunger, malnutrition and improve their food security.

France on its part provided the country a 22 million euros subsidy to support the most vulnerable households by improving their food security.

Sanctions Will Hurt Innocent Citizens – ECOWAS Group

The ECOWAS Community Citizens warned against sanctions that will hurt innocent citizens following the military takeover of Niger Republic.

The group said the coup will draw West Africa “back in terms of growth, in terms of political stability, in terms of employment creation and poverty reduction in the region.

“We call on our leaders in the region to be very careful because we have one method of sanction and the sanction mechanism must be very clear enough so that we are not also biting the people.

“Placing a sanction on a country and the poor masses that know nothing about what is happening will be the ones bearing the brunt of the economic sanctions. We solidiarise with ECOWAS calling on the president of Nigeria (Bola Tinubu) to find ways of deleting coup and coup d’ etat rather than meting sanctions on the poor that never knew about the coup.”
“(We) have concerns on how ECOWAS implements sanctions regime. A lot of the sanctions have harmed the people much more than the government that started it and it is therefore fair and important that sanctions are used in an intelligent manner so that it is the regime that suffers rather than the people,” the group added.