Drought highlights starving Niger's need for relief

[dArKeR]

CALAMITY: In a country where 25 percent of children die before they turn five when things go well, a plague of locusts and persistent drought have tipped the scales

AP , DAKAR, SENEGAL

In Niger, a desert country twice the size of France, most of the 11 million people live on US$1 a day. Forty percent of children are underfed, and one out of four die before they turn five.
And that's when things are normal. Throw in a plague of locusts and a familiar spectacle emerges: skeletal babies, distended bellies, people too famished to brush the flies from their faces.

To the aid workers charged with saving the dying, the immediate challenge is to raise relief money and get supplies to the stricken areas. They have to leave it to the economists and politicians to come up with a lasting remedy. One such economist is James Shikwati. He blames foreign aid.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2005/08/01/2003265960