Earlier this month, authorities in Niger asked reporters from the BBC not to pursue their inquiries about famine and child malnutrition in the eastern part of the country. The journalists reacted with an outcry of scandalised criticism. They suspected the Niger government of hiding something and defended the freedom of the press.
My wife and I have been working in some of the most undeveloped areas of the world, last year we were working in Niger, as employees of the Belgian NGO AQUADEV, to alleviate malnutrition. We know miscommunications can have negative consequences on the health of Niger’s children and wish to offer some views from the field in the hope of clarifying the situation.
In the last century, "colonial exhibitions" in several European cities showed Africans in fenced reconstitution of their villages. As late as 1958, visitors to the Universal Exhibition of Brussels were still throwing bananas at caged Congolese, supposedly to support the "international discovery of races and cultures". At that time, everybody saw this as ethnologically correct, although we all agree today that the European society of that time showed a real lack of awareness and respect for human dignity.
Today, Europeans’ reactions when confronted with simplified or over-emotional descriptions of food crisis on television news programmes, are exaggerated, if not plainly misinformed. This seems to be part of a general attitude to Africa. We have labelled Africa as the continent which needs saving, a group of poor, underdeveloped, wild countries that need our assistance and our sympathy. This attitude is accepted as politically correct.
We understand so little about these societies but we insist on throwing them American soy beans and European powdered milk surplus. This process is hurting Africa and attacking human dignity. It is tantamount to fencing them away in a very large zoo and throwing them tons of bananas or animal feed!
The Government of Niger is not hiding a situation that they would be ashamed of. On the contrary, they want to protect and improve their methods of early warning and swift reaction to the food crisis whenever they occur. In the tropical countries of Sahel, all exposed to climate and crickets hazards, these are long term and complex strategies, involving education, change of nutritional habits, better governance and general improvement of production and distribution, nationally and regionally.
Emergency humanitarian teams are admirable task forces, excelling in short term operations that hit the ground running in order to save lives. However they do not have the time to understand the structural problems that need longer-term solutions built on initiative and responsibility. Real human dignity calls for freedom of initiative. Like all adult human beings, Africans need to feel they manage their own lives, they need to feel they engineer their own solutions, even if the process includes trial and error.
Let me give you 3 short snapshots of the situation in Niger:
• We were there, for food security actions, in 2005. We can witness that FEWS NET (the early warning system of USAID1), the national early warning system (SAP 2), the national food crisis special cell (CCA3), and the quarterly bulletin of the AQUADEV NGO (4), had all given an accurate analysis of the situation as early as February 2005 (FEWS NET) and between March and August for the others. They had clearly described the existing risks of shortage, in some specific areas (rain and crickets, in these countries are only localised hazards). The CCA was ready for localised help, even if everybody admits that, in 2005, the stocks were difficult to keep at a sufficient level because of regional shortage of agricultural production in tropical Africa. This is a lesson that the CCA is now integrating in its strategies. There was little justification for a hasty famine strategy with messy outside interference. The principal need was to help the World Food Program to refurbish the national security stocks rapidly.
• Madame Wade, the European wife of the President of the Republic of Senegal, was explaining recently on TV5-Monde (5) that she was so moved by the pictures of hungry children broadcast on international television that she went to visit the MSF6 centre of Maradi (eastern Niger). She explained how she personally met the poor undernourished child she had seen on the televised report, and how struck she was by the fact that his accompanying mother was healthy and well fed. As a person well informed of the complexity of African societies she underlined that this clearly showed that they were not facing a famine problem but rather a nutrition problem, not an accident calling for emergency but a basic structural problem calling for a long-term improvement of preventive family practices.
• For several years, NGOs have been working in Niger, to implement cereal banks. Villagers are helped to organise stocks and manage them in order to insure low cost food support to families in case of seasonal shortage. It has often been hard to convince enough families to contribute to the starting stock. In August 2005 many villages had finally been able to reach the critical size of stocks that could make the entire operation successful, and a little light of pride was turning on in the eyes of the poorest farmers: now they were creating the solution, by themselves! No longer seeing themselves as assisted underdeveloped men and women, or Europe’s charity case. They finally regained their dignity, after so many years of catching bananas thrown at them!
Then the "humanitarian tsunami" hit the country from August to December 2005. Dozens of foreign groups were competing. They rushed everywhere to distribute anything and everything available. Today, as a result, NGOs trying to create cereal banks meet with growing difficulties. More and more villagers are saying "Why should we give our savings to build our own stock of cereals? Haven't you seen? They came and gave each family 20 bags of rice! And the other group came the next day and gave us 15 more bags! They didn't know how to get rid of their bags. Never the white men will let us be hungry!" They are returning to their original status of assisted mendicants. So much for dignity.
We hope these snapshots will help you make your own opinions. We are sure the Government of Niger does not want to keep you out of the country. They have nothing to hide. But if most of the foreign reporters continue to judge the situation on the briefest visit, interviewing young NGO workers shell shocked by their first experience of world misery, using pictures chosen to move the masses of generous readers or viewers back in Europe, their sympathy could, paradoxically, compound the problem. We are happy to direct anyone wishing to know more to reliable sources and reports on the subject, (though most of these are in French). And if you are ready to travel, we will welcome you in the villages for as long as is needed with open arms and no bias.
Louis Boël
Zinder, 2006, February 6.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Notes:
1 FEWS NET, the Food Early Warning System of USAID (United States Agency for International Development). See also www.fews.net and www.usaid.gov
2 Système d'Alerte Précoce (Government of Niger & selected NGO's)
3 Cellule de Crise Alimentaire (Government of Niger and major donors)
4 AQUADEV, a Belgian NGO, responsible for an Information System for Food Security (SISA: Système d'Information en Sécurité Alimentaire), supporting the databank of the SAP, in collaboration with AEDES. See also www.aquadev.org. and www.aedes.be
5 TV5 – Monde, world French speaking TV program. See also www.TV5.org
6 Médecins sans Frontières: doctors without borders
My wife and I have been working in some of the most undeveloped areas of the world, last year we were working in Niger, as employees of the Belgian NGO AQUADEV, to alleviate malnutrition. We know miscommunications can have negative consequences on the health of Niger’s children and wish to offer some views from the field in the hope of clarifying the situation.
In the last century, "colonial exhibitions" in several European cities showed Africans in fenced reconstitution of their villages. As late as 1958, visitors to the Universal Exhibition of Brussels were still throwing bananas at caged Congolese, supposedly to support the "international discovery of races and cultures". At that time, everybody saw this as ethnologically correct, although we all agree today that the European society of that time showed a real lack of awareness and respect for human dignity.
Today, Europeans’ reactions when confronted with simplified or over-emotional descriptions of food crisis on television news programmes, are exaggerated, if not plainly misinformed. This seems to be part of a general attitude to Africa. We have labelled Africa as the continent which needs saving, a group of poor, underdeveloped, wild countries that need our assistance and our sympathy. This attitude is accepted as politically correct.
We understand so little about these societies but we insist on throwing them American soy beans and European powdered milk surplus. This process is hurting Africa and attacking human dignity. It is tantamount to fencing them away in a very large zoo and throwing them tons of bananas or animal feed!
The Government of Niger is not hiding a situation that they would be ashamed of. On the contrary, they want to protect and improve their methods of early warning and swift reaction to the food crisis whenever they occur. In the tropical countries of Sahel, all exposed to climate and crickets hazards, these are long term and complex strategies, involving education, change of nutritional habits, better governance and general improvement of production and distribution, nationally and regionally.
Emergency humanitarian teams are admirable task forces, excelling in short term operations that hit the ground running in order to save lives. However they do not have the time to understand the structural problems that need longer-term solutions built on initiative and responsibility. Real human dignity calls for freedom of initiative. Like all adult human beings, Africans need to feel they manage their own lives, they need to feel they engineer their own solutions, even if the process includes trial and error.
Let me give you 3 short snapshots of the situation in Niger:
• We were there, for food security actions, in 2005. We can witness that FEWS NET (the early warning system of USAID1), the national early warning system (SAP 2), the national food crisis special cell (CCA3), and the quarterly bulletin of the AQUADEV NGO (4), had all given an accurate analysis of the situation as early as February 2005 (FEWS NET) and between March and August for the others. They had clearly described the existing risks of shortage, in some specific areas (rain and crickets, in these countries are only localised hazards). The CCA was ready for localised help, even if everybody admits that, in 2005, the stocks were difficult to keep at a sufficient level because of regional shortage of agricultural production in tropical Africa. This is a lesson that the CCA is now integrating in its strategies. There was little justification for a hasty famine strategy with messy outside interference. The principal need was to help the World Food Program to refurbish the national security stocks rapidly.
• Madame Wade, the European wife of the President of the Republic of Senegal, was explaining recently on TV5-Monde (5) that she was so moved by the pictures of hungry children broadcast on international television that she went to visit the MSF6 centre of Maradi (eastern Niger). She explained how she personally met the poor undernourished child she had seen on the televised report, and how struck she was by the fact that his accompanying mother was healthy and well fed. As a person well informed of the complexity of African societies she underlined that this clearly showed that they were not facing a famine problem but rather a nutrition problem, not an accident calling for emergency but a basic structural problem calling for a long-term improvement of preventive family practices.
• For several years, NGOs have been working in Niger, to implement cereal banks. Villagers are helped to organise stocks and manage them in order to insure low cost food support to families in case of seasonal shortage. It has often been hard to convince enough families to contribute to the starting stock. In August 2005 many villages had finally been able to reach the critical size of stocks that could make the entire operation successful, and a little light of pride was turning on in the eyes of the poorest farmers: now they were creating the solution, by themselves! No longer seeing themselves as assisted underdeveloped men and women, or Europe’s charity case. They finally regained their dignity, after so many years of catching bananas thrown at them!
Then the "humanitarian tsunami" hit the country from August to December 2005. Dozens of foreign groups were competing. They rushed everywhere to distribute anything and everything available. Today, as a result, NGOs trying to create cereal banks meet with growing difficulties. More and more villagers are saying "Why should we give our savings to build our own stock of cereals? Haven't you seen? They came and gave each family 20 bags of rice! And the other group came the next day and gave us 15 more bags! They didn't know how to get rid of their bags. Never the white men will let us be hungry!" They are returning to their original status of assisted mendicants. So much for dignity.
We hope these snapshots will help you make your own opinions. We are sure the Government of Niger does not want to keep you out of the country. They have nothing to hide. But if most of the foreign reporters continue to judge the situation on the briefest visit, interviewing young NGO workers shell shocked by their first experience of world misery, using pictures chosen to move the masses of generous readers or viewers back in Europe, their sympathy could, paradoxically, compound the problem. We are happy to direct anyone wishing to know more to reliable sources and reports on the subject, (though most of these are in French). And if you are ready to travel, we will welcome you in the villages for as long as is needed with open arms and no bias.
Louis Boël
Zinder, 2006, February 6.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Notes:
1 FEWS NET, the Food Early Warning System of USAID (United States Agency for International Development). See also www.fews.net and www.usaid.gov
2 Système d'Alerte Précoce (Government of Niger & selected NGO's)
3 Cellule de Crise Alimentaire (Government of Niger and major donors)
4 AQUADEV, a Belgian NGO, responsible for an Information System for Food Security (SISA: Système d'Information en Sécurité Alimentaire), supporting the databank of the SAP, in collaboration with AEDES. See also www.aquadev.org. and www.aedes.be
5 TV5 – Monde, world French speaking TV program. See also www.TV5.org
6 Médecins sans Frontières: doctors without borders
posted by Louis Boël at 3:33 PM
0 comments
