This week I travelled to Niger in West Africa with World Vision. It's my first time in Africa and I certainly didn't expect it to be SO hot and baron.

Niger is an amazing country and I have met some simply amazing people this week but they need your help, my help, our help. Their country is in food crisis.

Niger is landlocked, bordering Nigeria and Bennin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, Algeria and Libya to the north and Chad to the east. It is the largest nation in West Africa with 80% of it's mass being covered by the Sahara desert.

There is political unrest in many of Niger's bordering countries, adding to the problems people face here. In the last few months alone around 10,000 refugees have reportedly entered Niger to escape the Tuareg rebellion in Mali.

The consequences of a crisis like this will be dire and could result in an extended period of hunger and malnutrition, lack of seeds for next years harvest, mass migration from rural to urban areas, loss of livestock, increased food prices in local markets and 

the diminished capacity of the people affected to feed themselves.

Even in a good year, acute malnutrition rates in Niger and West Africa are frequently over the internationally accepted emergency threshold. Children who suffer from moderate acute malnutrition are 2.5 times more likely to die than a well nourished child if they don’t receive treatment, and this increases to about 9 times if the malnutrition is severe. In some areas 50% of children under-five suffer chronic malnutrition.

Children like Soumalia. 

Soumalia is suffering from sever acute malnutrition*, he has a problem with one of his eyes, his tummy is seriously distended and he has a very large umbilical hernia. At two years old he weighs just 8.1kg. He has been under nourished since he was born. In the UK the average two year old weighs 13kg.

Soumalia lives with his parents and sister in the frontier mining town of Komobangau. Thousands of families have made their way here to find work at the government de-commissioned gold mine and it is quite simply the harshest environment that I have ever witnessed.

Home is a very small structure made from stick mats. Half of the roof is missing. It blew off in yesterdays wind.

The family moved to Komobangau from Sourghaybangu which is 400 km away. They own their own land there but the drought has been so bad that all of their crops all failed.
Soumalia's mother Fatimata carries the stress of her situation in her face.

She says: "When I wake up in the morning the first thing I think about is where I am going to get food for that day. If I have no money I’ll go and ask friends in the village if I can borrow some for food. 

I’m very afraid of the situation here, and I know it is going to get worse. Life here is very tough but if we went back to Sourghaybangu we would die from starvation."

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Read about my full trip and the people that I met at http://www.shareniger.com