Breaking the myth of growth as a panacea
Development actors to identify, protect and build resilience of the poorest people in the Sahel
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By Cyprien Fabre, Head of Regional Support Office West Africa, ECHO (Directorate General Humanitarian Aids and Civil protection) Since the 2005 crisis in Niger, the humanitarian community has focused its efforts on the widespread problem of malnutrition. Acute malnutrition started to be measured regularly uncovering appalling malnutrition rates in Niger and, it quickly appeared, throughout the Sahel.
Malnutrition management was steadily improved, in spite of the constraints faced by national health systems. With some time and effort, tackling malnutrition is steadily becoming a higher priority for governments in the region.
It nevertheless also appeared that those malnutrition rates remained high even in ‘good’ agricultural years, and even in areas with substantial agricultural production. In the Sahel it seems there is no direct connection between agricultural production and malnutrition. And yet, the majority of development projects in recent decades have supported national policies focused on agricultural production with an emphasis on food self-sufficiency and export sectors.
But recent studies of the household economy in the Sahel have contradicted the cliché of rural environments where levels of wealth are homogenous.
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