After months of struggling to get by and not knowing where the next meal would come from, Maimouna Cisse has finally received some respite from the hunger that’s blighting Mali.

‘Today is a great day and our thanks go to those who’ve remembered the poor and needy,’ she says, after being supplied with 50kg of rice from Tearfund partner TNT.

Maimouna is a mother-of-seven who lives in the town of Gao, which has been in the frontline of Mali’s ongoing conflict between Islamic groups and Malian forces.

A military offensive in northern Mali would have serious humanitarian consequences and requires serious safeguards to be put in place, warns a coalition of ten non-governmental organisations. As the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution to authorise an international military force to restore territorial integrity, humanitarian NGOs operating in Mali have come together to sound a note of caution

Tearfund partners are preparing to step up help for thousands of people displaced by Mali’s civil conflict.

Some 412,000 Malians have fled their homes in the country’s north following the insurgency by Ansar Dine last January and many are now living in tough conditions among southern communities already under pressure from the region’s food crisis.

Four partners have formed a consortium to improve people’s access to food, promote public health and to run catch- up classes for children who have missed out on their education.

Extreme explorer Bear Grylls is calling on the British public to help the people of West Africa blighted by a severe food crisis.

18 million people are affected with many children suffering from malnutrition, and acute hunger has forced families to survive on little more than leaves.

"Millions in West Africa desperately need our help in their fight for survival: it is a plight where our help can literally change their families’ lives,” says Bear.

“Join me in the ultimate survival mission to save lives. It is too important to neglect."

The growing human cost of Niger’s hunger emergency can be seen in the dwindling frame of nine-month-old Karima.

Over the last four months she has lost half her body weight, coinciding with the failed harvest in this southern Dosso region of the country.

In recent weeks her condition has worsened and her mother, 25-year-old Dayaba, has brought Karima to Soukoukoutane health centre after a long journey by foot which began the previous day.

‘I feel weak and I have no breast milk for my baby which makes her cry,’ said Dayaba.

Residents of Timbuktu have been speaking of the hardships they have faced during recent weeks and encroaching rebel army attacks.

Tearfund partner TNT, which has been providing food aid to the community, has been hearing testimonies from those who had fled the Malian town due to fears of imminent attack.

It is now reported to be under the control of the Islamic group Ansar Dine, who seized it alongside Tuareg separatists on Sunday.

26 March 2012

A Tearfund partner is providing emergency food aid to people living around Timbuktu in Mali who are affected by the Sahel hunger crisis as well as in-country conflict.

Supplies are being distributed by our partner TNT not only to locals in this remote area south of the Sahara but to people who have fled there following the recent Tuareg rebellion.

Like Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad, Mali is badly affected by food shortages following the partial failure of rains and subsequent poor crops last year

Food price hikes, erratic weather patterns and insecurity are compounding a serious food crisis unfolding in West Africa.

Millions of people don’t have enough to eat after inadequate rains and insect infestations led to poor harvests and livestock losses in the Sahel region. Niger and Chad are the worst affected but parts of Burkina Faso and Mali are also deteriorating.

Now all his animals have gone. One by one they've been killed off by droughts, leaving Eglass facing old age surrounded by a desert of uncertainty.

'I do not have even a single chicken now,' says the 72-year-old from the Timbuktu region of Mali.

Over the years the harsh climate has taken its toll on the lives of Eglass, his 65-year-old wife Zikra and their five children.

The latest drought affecting the family,