Saliou Diallo works in his maize field. He used some cash from Oxfam to buy food for his family during the lean time while he was growing his crop. Photo by Holly Pickett/Oxfam America.

Before completely turning my back on 2012, I am reflecting on Oxfam’s work in the Sahel over the last year. After a season of poor or erratic rains across the region in 2011, Oxfam and many other humanitarian groups feared that another bad harvest in 2012 would push millions into starvation. I visited farmers in far eastern Senegal in April of 2012 to see what they recommended: They wanted seeds so they could plant, and food so they could work. They also said they needed rain, never guaranteed in the Sahel.

Oxfam responded to the crisis in seven countries: Burkina Faso, Chad, The Gambia, Niger, Mali, Mauritania, and Senegal. We assisted more than 1 million people with a variety of programs tailored to the specific location: We helped people fleeing violence and instability in Mali get the food and clean water they needed to survive. Oxfam repaired wells, and provided fodder for animals, and paid people to work on erosion control and soil improvement projects. We distributed soap so people could keep clean, and the means to treat water, to reduce vulnerability to waterborne diseases. We distributed food in places where none was available, and money to buy it where it was.

Thankfully, there was decent rain across the region in 2012. Harvests were up; many farmers with the seeds, tools, traction, fertilizer, labor, and other key inputs were able to grow something. However many farmers had to sell what they grew to pay back debts. Others could not grow much, if anything, for the simple reason that they are impoverished. When I went back to the same area in October, one farmer told me he could not farm an area large enough to feed his family. “I don’t have any equipment,” he said. “I don’t own a plow, any machines for processing groundnuts or rice, or a horse. I can only carry heavy loads on my head. It’s not easy. “

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Diénaba Diallo. Photo: Jacob Silberberg/Oxfam America

A few weeks ago, 2,000 government officials, ambassadors, and journalists came together in the capital of Burkina Faso to taste some local food. They were the judges of the second annual Koudou du Faso (“Golden Spoon”), a nationwide contest that awards prizes to the best dishes made with local ingredients like fonio, a grain native to the West African nation.

A cooking contest might seem ill-suited to a country that experienced a food crisis this year, leaving many families unable to afford even the essentials. As of the end of 2012, good rainfall and better harvests have provided some relief, though food prices remain high in many parts of the Sahel region.

But Diénaba Diallo, whose farmers’ confederation co-organized the Koudou de Faso with Oxfam’s GROW campaign, said the contest was about more than just food—it was about showcasing the people behind the cuisine.

“When we’re talking about transforming local products, we’re talking about women,” said Diallo, who wants to raise the profiles of the women who grow and prepare much of the country’s food, and to ensure their voices are heard. “[Women] play an important role in agriculture, but they don’t always participate in decision-making,” she said.

Diallo is president of the women’s caucus of Burkina Faso’s small-scale farmers’ association, and she believes that these women could, with the right resources, help prevent another crisis. “It’s really necessary to invest in small-holder farmers,” she explained. “[They need] access to seeds, to other technologies, and especially access to credit.”

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Mariama Ly

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Photo: Holly Pickett/Oxfam America

Mariama Ly is getting ready for the Tabaski holiday in her village, Bandafassi, in eastern Senegal. It’s a quiet day in the village, as most are away at area markets buying what they need for the holiday feast in two days. But Ly seems more or less prepared: She already owns two sheep, the center of the traditional feast on the holiday, commemorating Abraham’s sacrifice to Allah.

Ly sells food like dried fish, vegetables, cooking oil, and spices. “It’s going well, “she says, standing near her thatched-roof home. “We’re meeting all our needs with this business.”

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Some of my most vivid images of the Sahel food crisis are of hands and feet.

“The climate was better in the past," said Fatoumata Dioum, shown here in her garden in Fafacourou, Senegal. "Now, there is sometimes too much rain, sometimes not enough. We began to notice this more than ten years ago.”

When I traveled to Senegal recently to document Oxfam’s work on the crisis, I met with women farmers who lost their last harvest to erratic rains. Several times I noticed an injury to a woman’s foot or finger—usually something simple that without medical care had become so serious that it was disabling or worse: from the look of it, some would require amputation. But none of the women had any food stocks left  and, with prices on the rise, none could afford to purchase enough for her family to eat, so a visit to the doctor was out of the question.

The painful realities in West Africa are part of a bigger picture in which climate change and food price spikes are jeopardizing the lives and futures of many of the most vulnerable people around the world. A recent Oxfam research brief –”Extreme Weather, Extreme Prices” – explains how:

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Stevens recently returned from the Kolda region of Senegal which – like much of the western Sahel region of Africa – is experiencing a severe food crisis. This is the fourth of four blogs from the trip.

As photographer Holly Pickett and I traveled around the region of Kolda, Senegal, we noticed a powerful force at work in this emergency: the bond between mothers and children.

Fatoumata Dioum, the mother of two sons and two daughters, expressed the way that connection amplifies the pain of privation: “My only concern is how to buy food for my children. All the time, I’m worrying about food. When I go to bed, I worry about food. When I get up in the morning, I worry about food.”

But Holly and her camera captured something more: for many of the families caught in this crisis, the mother-child relationship also looks like one of the places where hope resides.

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The mothers I met stayed in close contact with their young children, such as here at a hygiene kit distribution. Photo: Holly Pickett/Oxfam

Read blogs about the situation in Senegal and our programs to improve access to food and help families protect their health.

Read about Oxfam’s work on the food crisis across the Sahel region.

An urgent request: Oxfam’s programs for this emergency are severely underfunded. Please help us with a donation if you can.

Stevens recently returned from the Kolda region of Senegal which – like much of the western Sahel region of Africa – is experiencing a severe food crisis. This is the third of four blogs from the trip.

Penda Balde and her husband Djibril Sylla are living in the grip of the Sahel food crisis. Their home, which they share with their children and grandchildren, is in Fafacourou, one of countless villages in Senegal where farmers lost their last harvest to the erratic rains of 2011. Their stocks of food ran out many months ago.

Residents of Fafacourou carry home hygiene kits—a collection of materials designed to help them protect their families' health. Photo: Holly Pickett/Oxfam

Which is why they welcomed a recent distribution of soap, bleach, and scrub brushes.

If you live in a place where clean drinking water and soap are everywhere, and where a case of waterborne disease is merely an inconvenience—easily treated and cured—it may be hard to wrap your mind around why people experiencing hunger and malnutrition would see hygiene activities as a matter of urgency. But for Balde, it is obvious. “If you don’t respect hygiene, you can get diarrhea. If you have diarrhea, you become weak.”

And Balde and Sylla can’t afford to be weak.

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Stevens recently returned from the Kolda region of Senegal which – like much of the western Sahel region of Africa – is experiencing a severe food crisis. This is the second of four blogs.

At dawn in the marketplace in the southern town of Kolda, all I can hear are crickets and birds and from time to time the bleat of a goat. A dog—lean as a greyhound—trots silently past the shrouded tables and shuttered storefronts on a mission that doubtless involves food. But with the buzz of a motorbike and the rumble of a truck, the delicate sounds of the morning fade, and the lively commotion of trade takes center stage.

Although last year’s harvest was a disaster, food makes its way here to the market one way or another. Big trucks parked in the side streets are full of goods imported from other regions, and soon white vans arrive from the countryside, filled to bursting with people and whatever they’ve managed to raise or forage in the run-up to the next harvest.

In crises like this, aid groups traditionally deliver food and hand it out for free to those who lack the means to buy it, but that approach can undermine local farmers and vendors who are themselves struggling hard to feed their families.

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Stevens recently returned from the Kolda region of Senegal, which—like much of the western Sahel region of Africa—is experiencing a severe food crisis. This is the first of four blogs from the trip.

In Senegal, the seasonal rains have arrived, and as we drove out from the town of Kolda to surrounding villages, the countryside was a lush green. Flourishing rice paddies and cornfields auger well for the harvest in the fall. There is food on the market streets—mangoes, rice, and a host of vegetables—and the livestock market, with its sleek oxen and healthy young stock, is thriving.

But, as with the famous optical illusion of the vase and two profiles, you can’t understand what is in front of your eyes until you examine the negative space that surrounds it.

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Amadou and Mariam show their support. Photo: Charlotte Wales/Oxfam

If you’re a fellow music fan, you probably caught some of the incredible live performances at the London Olympics closing ceremony last night. From the Who to Annie Lennox to the Spice Girls reunion, all kinds of British musical talent was on display for the world to see.

However, you may not have heard about another event taking place the same day—the Hunger Summit—that also inspired world-renowned artists to come together for a good cause.

To coincide with the end of the world’s biggest gathering of nations, UK Prime Minister David Cameron and Brazilian vice-president Michel Temer co-hosted a mini-summit of world leaders, NGOs, and leading businesspeople. They discussed ways to address hunger and malnourishment in some of the world’s poorest countries.

In an open letter to the global media published just before the summit, more than 30 leading musicians, actors, and writers joined forces to call for sustainable solutions to hunger and urgent action on the immediate crisis in the Sahel region. Those signing the letter included Oxfam ambassadors Djimon Hounsou, Angelique Kidjo, and Baaba Maal, as well as Brazilian, British, and African musicians like Sidi Touré (recently interviewed on this blog), Amadou and Mariam, Femi Kuti, Roots Manuva, Gilberto Gil, Mulatu Astatke, and many more.

Sidi Toure's sign reads "drought is natural, hunger is not." Photo: Charlotte Wales/Oxfam

Many of these artists also posed for exclusive photos for the Sahel 2012 campaign led by Oxfam, Africans Act for Africa, and Avaaz. More than 500,000 people worldwide signed the petition demanding concrete action from world leaders in response to the crisis in the Sahel, as well as an investment in long-term solutions to hunger.

In their letter, the artists also make a powerful call for a change in the way we think about Africa and crises like this one. Here’s an excerpt:

Let’s also be clear the solution [to crises] lies in Africa– a continent of vibrant, talented, creative and hardworking people.  Africans need a relationship with the rest of the world that treats them as who they are – equals with something to offer. … Together we can make an African future where ‘charity will have become unnecessary.’

Oxfam is aiming to help 1.2 million people across seven countries with programs that include cash transfers and cash-for-work initiatives, veterinary care for the livestock on which many families depend, and access to clean water and sanitation. We are also campaigning to change the root causes of this crisis. Find out how you can support our efforts.

Noaga Yambeogo plans to help feed her family with vegetables from an irrigated garden. Photo by Andy Hall/Oxfam

You’ve got to admire the focus and drive of a woman like Noaga Yambeogo. She’s a 50-year-old widow in Tansoba, a village in the center north region of Burkina Faso where more than two million people are struggling with a food crisis. They are among more than 18 million across the Sahel region of West Africa hit by the crisis.

But for about 32 women here, hope has arrived one steady drop at a time—through a drip irrigation system that Oxfam and its partner, ATAD, with support from the European Union, have helped to install. It’s part of a development of six areas with market gardens that are allowing 200 women to grow produce to feed their families and to sell.

In Tansoba, Yambeogo, who has four children, is president of the women’s cooperative.

“I was elected because I work hard,” she says. “They thought I could push them to do a good job because I love working myself.”

Anyone who has ever had a vegetable garden knows how labor-intensive it can be, especially if your goal is to produce enough to make a bit of income. And for the women here, the stakes are as high as they can get: The health of their children may depend on what they can coax from the ground. Read the rest of this entry »