The famine threatening the lives of 3.6 million people in Niger is a clear example of the need for an emergency billion-dollar UN fund, the International Development Secretary, said today.

Hilary Benn was speaking as a UK charity was preparing to send an aid aircraft with emergency food and medical supplies to the impoverished West African state, which was hit last year by drought and its worst invasion of desert locusts for a decade.

The aircraft, leaving this evening from Ostend in Belgium, is being organised by Save the Children and funded by Mr Benn's Department for International Development (Dfid).

It will carry 41 tonnes of health and feeding kits and food supplies such as peanut paste and high-protein biscuits, enough to feed 15,000 malnourished youngsters for a month.

United Nations aid experts predicted famine in the country late last year and the UN launched its first appeal as long ago as November, but it was not until renewed appeals in March and May - followed by the arrival of Western television news crews in Niger - that donors started to respond.

Dfid has so far committed £3 million to the crisis, making Britain the second largest bilateral donor after the United States. Half of that money has been allocated to the UN's World Food Programme, a Dfid spokeswoman said.

Mr Benn today denied that the Government has been dragging its feet over the crisis. He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "It was only really in the middle of May that people really became clear about the scale of the crisis."

But he added: "Does the international system work properly in these terrible tragedies? The answer is, it doesn’t. That’s why, in December last year, I made some proposals for fundamental change. I’m afraid that the crisis we are now seeing unfolding in Niger is a really good reason why we have to do better in the future."

The proposal for the $1-billion (£571 million) fund that UN operational agencies could draw on as soon as emergencies unfolded is on the agenda of a UN summit being held on September 14 in New York.

Mr Benn said: "What we have at the moment, it’s a bit like a fire breaks out and then people get on the phone and ring up the various donors and say can you give us some money so we can buy a fire engine, can you give us some money so we can recruit firefighters? The current system doesn’t work. We need a better system.

"The fact is the money is available but it’s coming too slow because the system doesn’t work right. That’s why we need to change it."

The aid agency Oxfam is backing calls for the fund. Phil Bloomer, Oxfam's campaigns director, said: "It is outrageous that the world waits until children are dying before acting to save them. The UN launched their appeal for Niger in November 2004, but it wasn’t until international TV crews arrived last week that money really started coming in.

He added: "The amounts asked for are paltry. A small proportion of the new money pledged at the G8 would cover it. Money for Niger will eventually arrive, but it will be too late for many.

"Starvation does not have to be inevitable. The food crisis in Niger was predicted months ago and could easily have been prevented if funding was immediately available. In 50 days’ time, world leaders must set up a UN emergency fund to stop food crises like Niger ever happening again."

Niger is the worst affected country in the region, but Mauritania, Mali and Burkina Faso are also affected by the same drought. Aid experts are already warning of further crises in other parts of Africa, including Ethiopia, Kenya and Eritrea.

Chris Endean, a World Food Programme spokesman, said that the Rome-based agency was hoping to deliver 23,000 tonnes of people to 1.2 million people most at risk over the next five weeks. The WFP has received confirmed donations of $9 million from its $16 million appeal, including $912,000 already received from the UK.

Mr Endean said the logistics of getting the food in to Niger were not difficult: it can be easily trucked into the country from ports in Togo, Benin and Ghana.

"Logistics is not the issue; it's about getting the donations to pay for the food," he said. "We've been alerting the international community to the need for donations since November last year but what's really galvanised donors has been the media images, the devastating images of hunger. We're finally getting the response that we needed much earlier."

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