Rain could make famine in Niger worse

Rain is finally falling on the parched land of Niger, but it may make the famine now threatening 2.5 million of its people even worse, top aid officials said yesterday.

Torrential rains, following 13 months of drought, are adding a savage new twist to what the UN calls the world's "number one forgotten and neglected emergency"

It has forced parents to feed poisonous leaves to their children to try to keep them alive.

Some 800,000 children under five now need emergency food supplies, but aid has been desperately slow in coming even though the crisis has been predicted since late last year.

The UN said yesterday that more aid had been pledged in the past 10 days, since television pictures of starving children began appearing on the world's screens than in the previous 10 months when it had been desperately seeking funds to avert catastrophe.

Planes carrying food are due to arrive over the weekend - the first British flight took off yesterday - but experts say it will take at least two months to get a full rescue effort under way.

Natasha Quist, Oxfam's regional director for West Africa, said of the rain: "It is too late, and there is too much of it."

She said from near Maradi, in the heart of the famine area of southern Niger, that violent rainstorms are washing away farmers' precious topsoil.

Many are rushing out to till the soil to try to get a harvest after the long drought, but do not have enough seeds to plant.

The crisis came to a head, virtually unnoticed, at the time of Live8 and the G8 summit in Gleneagles, both of which focused on the plight of Africa.

"I was in London at the time", says Ms Quist. "I was thrilled to see all the talk of making poverty history. But at times I was shaking with frustration because we could not get the message across.

"The response since the television pictures has been fantastic. But we are now too late, for many of the children are dying."

Niger, the second poorest country on Earth, has suffered years of economic decline, living permanently on the brink of catastrophe.

Then last year the rains failed and the country was hit by a plague of locusts, which gobbled up the little that had managed to grow. It was clear from last autumn that it faced an emergency this year.

The UN appealed for international aid in November, and again in March, but until recently the industrialised world had provided $1m of the $16m requested.

The Niger government also downplayed the danger while elections were held last year and failed to provide food when the famine broke out.

- INDEPENDENT