FAO wants $110mn to handle Food Crisis in Sahel

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have appealed to oil-exporting and mineral-rich countries to establish a fund to deal with a food crisis that has hit the Sahel region and other parts of Africa.

“We’re especially worried about the Sahel because there are already a lot of conflicts in that region, which risks seeing additional fighting if the famine spreads,” FAO Director General Jose Graziano Da Silva said at a UN conference on Africa in Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo. 

The FAO needs $110 million to handle the crisis in the short term, he added. 

The FAO estimates that millions of Africans are facing food insecurity as a result of drought and conflicts in Sudan and South Sudan, as well as in the Sahel, which covers parts of Senegal, southern Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, southern Algeria, Niger, northern Nigeria, Chad, northern Cameroon, the Republic of Sudan (including Darfur and the southern part of the country), and Eritrea, according to Press TV.

More than 5 million people in Niger, 3 million in Mali, and 1.5 million in Burkina Faso are facing a food crisis, according to the FAO.