In response to the worsening hunger crisis in the West African country of Niger, MAZON has announced a $10,000 emergency grant to Rain for the Sahel and Sahara.

The funds will deliver critical food aid – including semolina, rice, pasta, oil and other foodstuffs – to some of Niger’s most impoverished and malnourished citizens.  Additionally, they will support Rain’s school garden program, which seeks to teach sustainable agriculture to children in an effort to craft a long-term solution to Niger’s ongoing famine.

The Republic of Niger is a French-speaking nation bordering Chad and Nigeria.  With an annual per capita income of $200, Niger is the world’s second-poorest country; 64% of its 12 million residents survive on less than $1 per day.  Ninety percent of the country is desert or arid land known as “sahel,” and less than four percent is suitable for farming.

Drought and an infestation of locusts have confronted a quarter of Niger’s people with severe hunger.  Together, they are pushing the death rate for children – at one in four, already the second-highest under 5 mortality rate in the world – even higher.  About 1.2 million of Niger’s 3.6 million rural farmers and herders are facing devastating food shortages, and nearly 900,000 people urgently need immediate food assistance.  All told, hunger and starvation threaten as many as 2.5 million of the country’s most vulnerable people.

The sahel is populated by the Tuareg, pastoral nomads who endure some of the planet’s harshest conditions to find grazing lands for their herds.  Hunger hits the Tuareg especially hard, as drought denudes pastures, forcing families to sell their cows for next to nothing just as dwindling crop supplies raise the cost of food.  Rain