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If you simply scratch the surface, it appears as if Nigeria is having a golden moment. It’s a middle income country according to the World Bank, and is the second largest economy in Africa after South Africa. The U.S. gets 20 percent of its oil from Nigeria and is the nation’s largest foreign investor. And according to Citigroup, no country in the world will have a higher average GDP growth rate in the next 40 years than Nigeria.

As the regional food crisis intensifies in Africa’s Sahel region, we’ve worked to provide you with the latest information. Most recently, we wrote about the situation on the ground in Chad, where food shortages, price hikes, and drought have put many thousands of children in danger. Indeed, one million children are at risk of severe acute malnutrition across the region. This week we shift our focus to Chad’s neighboring countries of Mali and Mauritania, where we’re working to scale up our operations to meet growing needs.

For a four-year old Congolese girl and her mother, hope and healing after a critical nutrition intervention from ACF

For 29-year-old Congolese mother Bitondo Patience, malnutrition was a silent threat that attacked her daughter without obvious indicators. Her four-year-old, Wabiwa, showed signs of illness—vomiting, lack of appetite, running a temperature—but just what afflicted her was a mystery to Bitondo.

Action Against Hunger partners with UNICEF and ECHO to tackle acute malnutrition in northeastern Uganda.

The Karamoja region of Uganda suffers from persistently high rates of childhood malnutrition. In this land of nomadic herders, rates of acute malnutrition routinely surpass 15 percent, while some 40 percent of the under-five population is considered underweight and at risk.

According to the United Nations, Somalia is no longer experiencing a famine. While we can and should cheer this news, to understand what it actually means we must examine how the UN defines famine—and how Somalia’s new status relates to our greater concern for the health of its people.

So, how does the UN decide whether to declare a famine in a country or region? There are three essential conditions:

Donors must continue their efforts to help Haitians rebuild their lives

Since the devastating earthquake struck Haiti in 2010, followed by one of the world’s worst ever cholera epidemics, Action Against Hunger teams have been at the forefront of relief efforts, helping Haitians to make a fresh start, and have so far spent 15 million Euros on Haiti’s recovery.