The number of food insecure in the Sahel is expected to grow from 11.3 million in 2013 to more than 20 million in 2014, mainly due to an increase in cases in northern Nigeria, northern Cameroon and Senegal. IRIN went to Louga, in northern Senegal, to find out why the number of hungry is so high.
Author: WHES
With the main harvest season just weeks away, Central African Republic farmers struggle to recover from devastation
With the year’s main planting season just weeks away, many in the Central African Republic (CAR) have been left desperately ill-equipped by months of conflict. In the charred village of Bessan, to the west of the country, the concerns are typical: a dire lack of seeds, tools and manpower.
Nigerians ask why oil funds are missing
LAGOS, Nigeria — Even in a country where untold oil wealth disappears into the pockets of the elite, the oil corruption scheme he was investigating seemed outsize — and he threatened to lay it bare at a meeting with Nigeria’s top bankers.
Chiquita merger reignites fears of a disappearing banana crop
Chiquita Brands International, the U.S.-based global produce company that’s perhaps best known for bananas — as well as for its catchy logo featuring the First Lady of Fruit — announced Monday that it would acquire Fyffes, its Irish rival. The two companies will become one before the end of 2014, making the new firm, ChiquitaFyffes, into the biggest producer and distributor of bananas in the world, with a $4.6 billion in annual revenue.
Egyptian authorities detain thousands amid crackdown on dissent
CAIRO — At his office in downtown Cairo, defense lawyer Mahmoud Belal chain-smokes Marlboro Reds and gulps cups of bitter Turkish coffee — fuel to help him juggle constant phone calls and pleas for help amid a vast government crackdown on dissent.
This is what a job in the US’s new manufacturing industry looks like—half the pay, working for a temp agency, no sick days, but still it’s a job
SMYRNA, TENN. — Chris Young’s pain is in his wrists. It started about a year ago — at first a numbness, and then sharp pains, all the way up to his elbow. He’d injured the left wrist in a long-ago motorcycle accident, but it didn’t act up again until he spent months moving heavy pieces of metal, again and again, at Nissan’s manufacturing plant in Smyrna, Tenn. Managers transferred him off that part of the line. Still, there’s no way to make it stop completely.
US takes training role in Africa as threats grow and budgets shrink
DIFFA, Niger — Across Africa, affiliates of Al Qaeda and other Islamist militants are proving resilient and in some cases expanding their influence, from Nigeria to Libya to Somalia, Western and African counterterrorism officials say.
Mexico targets gang that infiltrated the mining industry
MEXICO CITY — Mexico has stepped up its effort to crack down on one of the most powerful and feared criminal organizations in the country, with arrests and seizures this week aimed not at drug trafficking or extortion but at the gang’s lucrative infiltration of mining and smuggling iron ore to China.
Unravelling Zimbabwe’s “food crisis”
Is there a food crisis in Zimbabwe? The UN says 2.2 million people will be in need of food assistance until the end of March, based on a 2013 government-led joint survey by the Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee (ZimVAC). But the government is now questioning those findings.
Poor state of India’s food subsidies
NEW DELHI — The latest economic survey of India contains cheerful prose. India’s immediate future is “propitious.”But there are grim bits, too. If the rich reach the third chapter of Volume 1, they may groan with exasperation, because it addresses subsidies for the poor. The chapter is titled “Wiping every tear from every eye,” which the elite would translate as “Using cash as tissues for the poor.” There is a view among the urban upper classes that such subsidies are wasteful.
