WHAT HAPPENED? The rock stars played for Africa in Hyde Park. Those eight men in suits met in a hotel at Gleneagles to discuss Africa’s problems. Scores of journalists and programme makers fanned out across Africa to show that not everyone on the continent was either fighting or starving. The Year of Africa would give us a new positive image of Africa. We all agreed that at least Africa would no longer be stereotyped as a dying child.

Unnoticed in Niger that was exactly what was happening. Children were starving to death. Niger is not a war-torn, collapsed state with no communications. It may be the second-poorest country on the planet but it is a democracy with a free press and a Government that is not among the world’s worst. What is more the early-warning system worked and the Government and the United Nations had appealed for help. So why was nothing done?

First of all, the context. Niger is in the Sahel, those harsh drylands south of the Sahara desert. It is a tough place. Most people live on what they can grow in the short period after rain and before fertile ground turns to hard, barren, cracked earth. When that food runs out people turn to their goats and cattle to get through the bad times. Every year, just before the unreliable rainy season, it gets tougher. If there is no food, children are the first to go without. You can always replace a child. Adults are essential to survival. That is the way it is there. Even in normal years there are many cases of severe malnutrition among children. The World Food Programme (WFP)has a permanent presence in these countries, providing food in the bad times. Many of the 26 million Africans it feeds every year live in the Sahel.

This year was particularly bad because last August the rains barely came. Instead, just as the meagre crops were beginning to sprout they were gobbled up by the worst plague of locusts in 15 years. When crops fail, people begin to move in search of food for their animals or to sell them. The next stage in the survival strategy is the search for wild plants that are a lifeline in famine times.

All these patterns of behaviour were observed and recorded last year, and in November the Nigerien Government and the WFP launched an appeal for money to buy food. In January a nutrition survey suggested that up to 350,000 children under the age of five could be suffering from malnutrition. President Mamadou Tanja, however, was reluctant to allow WFP to launch a full emergency programme. No one is quite sure why. Some talk of the power of the grain traders who gang up on the Government and insist that no extra grain is imported because it lowers the price. Others suggest that he may have been concerned about the image of Niger as a helpless country that could not feed itself. Maybe he did not realise that this was an exceptionally bad year. When he visited Washington and met President Bush earlier this year, he did not mention the famine.

Once, France, the former colonial power in Niger, would have picked up the problem and seen that aid flowed, but France is less interested in its former African colonies now. Also these are the days of African solutions to African problems, Africa taking care of itself. So where was the regional organisation, the Economic Community of West African States? And where was the African Union, the continent-wide body that proclaims lofty ideals? Both remained silent.

The rest of the world showed the usual reluctance to respond to UN emergency appeals for Africa. Further appeals for Niger were made — and ignored — in March and May. Ironically the last was made just before the G8 countries, the world’s main donors to emergencies and disasters, were finalising their plans to do something about Africa. But while they were concentrating on the bigger picture — debt, trade and aid for development — the appeal for emergency aid went unnoticed. Just before the G8 Summit the UN launched a flash appeal. Hardly anything came back.

Niger’s people have suffered from a series of interlocking failures: the Nigerien Government’s appeal was muted. It did not allow the WFP to act. The WFP did not make a fuss. No one outside the country took any notice. The donors say that appeals do not always fit their budget cycles and they cannot respond to them quickly. The cruel truth seems to be that dry figures on pieces of paper passed between officials do not produce action. Television pictures of dying children do. Immediately after the first BBC reports, planes were chartered, food loaded and camps set up. The money is flowing. President Tanja immediately paid a visit to the stricken area — his first.

Hilary Benn, the Secretary of State for International Development, says that it is the system that needs changing. He says that when there is a fire the UN has to appeal for a fire engine and get someone to pay for it. But this is not strictly true. The WFP monitors the yearly hungry season in the Sahel and with the co-operation of local governments, can deliver food to most people who need it. The mechanism is in place and works. The fire engine is there. All it needs is the water — money.

And not just for Niger. Drought and locusts do not observe national boundaries. What is happening next door in Mali and Mauritania? The WFP still insists that its biggest problems lie in Sudan, and even more in southern Africa where a combination of drought and Aids has put the lives of some 10 million in danger. The image of Africa as the starving child will be with us for some time to come.

Richard Dowden is director of the Royal African Society

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