Key points

• Good crop prospects confirmed by PREGEC

• Locust situation remains of concern

• Grain prices in West Africa and on the international market: millet prices remain high but other coarse grain prices are normalizing in West Africa

• Households whose livelihoods remain affected by the 2011-2012 crisis might face food difficulties in 2013

More than 10 million people have been affected by the recent flooding in West Africa. Rainfall has eased across much of the region and clean-up and reconstruction efforts are underway. Nigeria remains the most affected country with 2.3 million people still displaced. There is also renewed flooding in Niger following upstream rains in Guinea. Relief efforts have now shifted to medium and long-term prevention measures.

Response missions to Cameroon, Benin, Niger and Chad were recently completed and a Bank-led impact assessment scoping mission is currently underway in Nigeria.

WFP’s response to the food crisis in the Sahel

Drought in the Sahel region of West Africa brought hunger to millions for the third time in seven years.
The harvest has started in most areas and crop prospects are overall favorable. Neverthe-less, communities remain weakened after months of hardship during a lean season that was longer and more difficult than usual.

During the lean season when needs were greatest, WFP supported between five and six mil-lion people each month through nutrition and food security activities.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

L'Essentiel

 Bonnes perspectives agricoles confirmées par le PREGEC

 Une situation acridienne qui demeure sérieuse

 Tendances sur les marchés internationaux et en Afrique de l’Ouest : prix du mil toujours très élevés et normalisation du prix des autres céréales en Afrique de l’Ouest

 Difficultés alimentaires possibles en 2013 pour les ménages dont les moyens d’existence sont toujours affectés par la crise de 2011-2012

LONDON, 10 December 2012 (IRIN) - In July last year President Boni Yayi of Benin sent a worried letter to the UN secretary-general. His country was being threatened by the activities of pirates, who were scaring shipping away from the ports on which his country's revenues depend. He wanted international help of the kind which had been deployed against piracy off the coast of Somalia.

De bonnes perspectives des récoltes au Sahel et en Afrique de l’Ouest dans un contexte marqué par des taux de malnutrition élevés

lundi 26 novembre 2012

Facing hardship, families in Benin are sending their children to work in sometimes brutal conditions in neighbouring Nigeria

The abuse Timothy Goudjana suffered as a teenage labourer in Nigeria still haunts him. But decades later, he sent two of his own children, at a much younger age, to a similar fate.

Read the full report on the Guardian.

DAKAR, 20 November 2012 (IRIN) - Health workers currently immunizing thousands of children and young adults against Meningitis A in Benin are currently doing so without having to spend days preparing ice packs and sourcing generators and fridges to load on trucks because the vaccine has now won approval for being kept at up to 40 degrees Celsius for as long as four days.

Before, like almost all vaccines, the Meningitis A vaccine (marketed in Africa as MenAfricVac) was only licensed for use if kept at temperatures of 2-8 degrees Celsius.