Summary
HOW quickly we forget. Just a few weeks ago, millions pledged to end what Bob Geldof called the pornography of African misery played out on our television screens each night. Since Live8, we have heard little about the continent and its troubles. We were, in fact, told that our outpouring of concern had forced a unique deal from the leaders of G8 countries. Given the terrorist attacks in London, and their extraordinary aftermath, little real analysis was done of that Gleneagles deal - and whatever did appear was eclipsed by the bombings.
We should therefore be ashamed to learn that, while we were congratulating ourselves, a humanitarian catastrophe loomed. The world was warned by the United Nations last November that the landlocked, Saharan state of Niger faced a food shortage following drought and a plague of locusts. Nobody paid any attention. It got less coverage in the press than the locusts themselves, which tore through the country's fields of millet and maize in August 2004. They provided the western media with surreally beautiful images of golden, bird-like insects swarming against the desert landscape. The plague aroused our interest for all the wrong reasons: it seemed biblical, almost romantic. But in Niger, which struggles to store enough grain even in good years, it was an unmitigated disaster.See the full content of this document
Extract
As Niger Fattens Its Coffers, the Children Starve to Death
The United Nations appealed for food again in May, just as the Make Poverty History campaign was mounting its final push towards the G8 Summit. Again, the pleas were ignored, even though 150,000 children were already severely malnourished and 3.3million people, a quarter of the popula...
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